
Class JdM_t4_ 

Book J^Lil_ 

Copyright N° 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Letters Touching 
Unrest Cause and Remedy 



NEW YORK. 

WILLIAM M. BABBOTT. 



<« 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

JAN 9 1905 

- uo^ritiu entry 

CUSS £l. AXc, Noi 

COPY B. 



Written in 1903. 

Published in 1904. 

Copyright, 1904, by 

WILLIAM M. BABBOTT, 

In the United States and Great Britain. 



WESTERN CIVILIZATION. 



"'Time," says Bacon, "is the greatest innovator; and if time of 
course alter all things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall 
not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?" 



I. 



DURING these history-making days, to one 
keeping in touch with the world's current 
affairs, it becomes evident that they are so revolu- 
tionary and alarming that at times it would seem 
as if no one desired to get down to facts. For in- 
stance, during my travels in 1901, the enthusiastic 
admiration of the press in England and on the 
Continent for American business and educational 
methods was extremely confusing to me. After 
reading Lord Rosebery's astounding statements 
that ''some of the Captains of Industry conduct 
governmental affairs," and that "Britons are im- 
potent," I did not think the time opportune for pub- 
lishing the little matter I had then prepared to the 
contrary. But now that some of the falseness of 
modern methods is coming to light men may pos- 
sibly cease to praise and instead give to current af- 
fairs a little rational attention. 

Every one realizes how interminable have been 
the discussions of the social question and how 
fruitless have been the efforts of the many meetings 
and congresses convened with the object of dis- 
covering a panacea for the universal unrest. With- 
out possessing a sufficient knowledge of the facts 
relating to the cause and remedy all that has been 
said and written upon this subject has been harmful 
rather than beneficial. Realizing this, I would not 
presume to advance any views upon this question 
were I not convinced that there is a simple and 
1 



2 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

practicable remedy. I would ask that the reader 
bear this in mind as it will make me the better un- 
derstood. 

Notwithstanding that steam, electricity and mod- 
ern education have been such important factors in 
creating unrest, the absence of intelligence dis- 
played in relation to the conception and conduct of 
life, and in all that has been done and said in favor 
of centralized industrialism, and the reverse of good 
results from writing and preaching, lead one to be- 
lieve there is to be found neither diagnosis nor 
remedy. However, as an unschooled, plain business 
man, I will, in a homely way, say a few things which 
my experience teaches me relate to the world's 
most vital questions. In doing so, I am aware that 
nothing brings such vituperation as the statement 
of a fact does when it bears on advancement. I 
speak of the world at large, because in this connec- 
tion countries can no longer be successfully dealt 
with singly. 

When it results from occupation in localities 
where there are proper food and environment for 
physical and moral development, all making for 
preventive medicine, preventive alcoholism, pre- 
ventive crime, preventive war, and, not least of all, 
preventive charity, man's everlasting need is a rea- 
sonable unit of income. 

For the grand and indisputable test of any gov- 
ernment is contained in the question, What did it 
do for the people? Did it properly feed, clothe and 
house them, or did it not? 

My purpose is to discover whether Christendom 
has or has not complied with these demands. 

The few following paragraphs deal with the ratio 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 3 

of people in employment. They relate to and 
strike at the fundamentals of society. Provided 
the falseness of the conditions cannot be righted, 
nothing to uplift mankind can be done. Why 
deny the fact that, as a rule, men do not read nor 
even listen as intelligently as they should. I, there- 
fore, beg that you give me your earnest attention. 
Because of the conditions they represent, I shall 
speak of men and things rather plainly, but by no 
means as plainly as I could and would like to, or as 
plainly as the situation demands. 

To obtain a sound conception of modern indus- 
trialism, and current affairs, it is imperative that 
one should know something about the number of 
wage-earners and the number the world's purchas- 
ing power can employ in centralized manufactures, 
also a few facts relating to the affairs of the men 
in control, and something about what is going on 
in agriculture. 

According to the United States census report 
for the year 1900, excluding establishments with an 
output below $500, 5,319,598 men, women and chil- 
dren in this country turned out $13,019,251,014 
worth of manufactured products. Whether these 
data are or are not overdrawn, there is sufficient 
leeway for the present waning purchasing power. 

Now one year with another, in centralized and 
thoroughly equipped and economically con- 
ducted establishments, the world's purchasing 
power cannot absorb the centralized manufac- 
tured products of 10,000,000 men, women and 
children. That is, under present false methods 
three-quarters of one per cent. (I should say one- 
half of one per cent.) of the people can with modern 



4 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

machinery do this manufacturing, and as the pur- 
chasing power continues to decrease so will the 
number of men required decrease. 

Grant, merely for the moment, that under cen- 
tralization Europe can hold its own, the figures will 
show that to do so the number of artisans must be 
reduced enormously, and that patchwork will not 
do. On the other hand, look at these figures in the 
light also of manufacturing transposition, for in- 
stance, to the spots where the raw material is 
produced and consumed, and to the Orient, and it 
will be apparent that Europe cannot long hold its 
present relative status. For example, in America 
5,000,000 men, women and children can now annu- 
ally turn out $15,000,000,000 worth of manufac- 
tures, with a steady per capita increase, as against 
the present output of $15,050,000,000 by 28,500,000 
British, German, French and Russian artisans. 

What at this point I would mention, is the light- 
ning trend of commerce toward the Pacific. In the 
coming commercial struggle, who dares to say the 
Orient will not down the Occident? — for there are 
more disciplined men in the Orient who are phys- 
ically and mentally fitted for any kind of work than 
in Christendom. If industrialism is to be the order 
of the day, as has been the practice elsewhere, scrip 
can be issued, the obtainment of experience being 
merely a matter of common sense, of which Orien- 
tals are not wholly deficient. The portentousness 
of it all surpasses comprehension. To interpret 
the irrationality of commercialism, hence, of West- 
ern civilization, does not require overdeep or over- 
sound reasoning. 

It is impossible for me to take the time to work 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 5 

out the details of this monstrosity. But, broadly 
speaking, one-half and more of this grand total of 
manufacturing is for the creation and maintenance 
of centralization itself. The world would have been 
far better off, as shown by unrest, had the central- 
ized annual production been smaller by fifteen 
billion and more dollars. 

There is one thing to which I would now call es- 
pecial attention — namely, that, among all peoples, 
when properly fed and environed, there is a super- 
abundance of those competent to fill the place of an 
artisan, a position absolutely inferior to that of the 
farmer, because, if the world is to be advanced, he, 
the farmer, must apply the great science of biology 
and do more or less manufacturing. 

While public sentiment has been molded into 
the belief that centralized industrialism is non- 
competitive, 'therefore more economic and more 
desirable than when under the good old law of de- 
mand and supply, let us, independent of the ruin 
which is a sequence, note a few of the first and di- 
rect items of cost when the competition is as at 
present largely between countries, to wit, the cost 
and maintenance of armies, navies, and their con- 
comitants, including wars; cost of increased output 
of coal, minerals and iron; cost and maintenance of 
transportation; increased cost of conducting and 
living in cities; increasing cost and complexity to 
such an extent as to make ideal government an im- 
possibility, etc. Is not a cursory glance at these 
items enough to stagger one? 

Every intelligent man should be familiar with 
these facts, because, so long as existing centralized 
manufacturing remains in force, as regarding bet- 



6 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

terment, it matters not, other than that a business 
is conducive to better results when it is conducted 
under one. head rather than under many, whether 
the factories be owned and conducted as at present, 
or socialistically; a general breakdown, such, for 
example, as is illustrated by the sugar industry, is 
inevitable. 

Let us leave centralized industrialism and take 
up the fundamentals, the now centralized food 
question. It is notable that the nitrogenous are the 
strength-giving foods, and that the maintenance 
of the soil and the development of ideal social con- 
ditions are wholly dependent upon the proper pro- 
duction of these foods. Of the 1,000,000,000 peo- 
ple under Christian rule, so centralized is its pro- 
duction, that no mean percentage of the proper 
nitrogenous food they consume is produced at a 
ratio which would require the labor of fewer than 
50,000,000 of them. Fewer than one per cent., or 
10,000,000, can do more centralized manufacturing 
than the total number have purchasing power to ab- 
sorb. But rather than 60,000,000, say 100,000,000 
are so centralized as to largely do the work for 
these 1,000,000,000 people. 

Say that a few bankers, brokers, reorganization- 
ists, flotationists, exploiters, or a few captains of in- 
dustry and rulers, dominated the prices, as applied 
to the world's production and consumption, say the 
same men dominated the transportation lines and 
rates. That is, say nature was interfered with and 
reversed, that at the tip end of the tail a few hairs 
were made into a battery for giving life to and wag- 
ging the dog. What would be the result? De- 
struction of the dog. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 7 

In relation to the 1,000,000,000 people under 
Christian rule, for the purpose of illustrating what 
has been and is going on, let me carry this question 
further on the road to its logical conclusion. When 
the captains of industry will have succeeded in cen- 
tering in towns a large percentage of the peoples of 
Europe and America; when they will have suc- 
ceeded in centralizing the production of albumi- 
nous, blood-making, cell-building, and vitalizing 
food, in the hands of say fewer than 100,000,000 of 
the 1,000,000,000; when they will have succeeded in 
modernizing the factories (to the extent of doubling 
the capacity of output of the American manufac- 
turers) so as to require for meeting the world's pur- 
chasing power fewer than 10,000,000 artisans, 
when, I repeat, all and more than this will have 
been accomplished by the world's captains of in- 
dustry, what will be the effect upon society and 
civilization? Destruction. This is the trend of 
things to-day. 

While, as being a living thing, all the world is 
giving this credence and fertilizing it, it is, on the 
contrary, an abnormality. Without transposition, 
the referendum, single-tax, government ownership, 
cooperation, or any other political scheme, offered 
as a curative, evidences littleness or dishonesty of 
purpose. I may, at points relating hereto, empha- 
size and reemphasize these things, but for good they 
cannot be repeated often enough. 

The previous matter cannot be dismissed with- 
out supplementing it with a word on food, for, with- 
out health and vitality, what earthly good is man? 
Moreover, in the food question are the funda- 
mentals of sociology. This is at the root and it is 



8 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

the basis of my work — my specialty. Indeed, Ap- 
plied Biology is my specialty, and to this these let- 
ters pertain throughout. Briefly, speaking advis- 
edly, and without reservation, under Christian rule 
there is not a spot where, in poverty or affluence, 
during the first and important years of their lives, 
children are started properly, or to make healthy 
men and women. In my long experience, I am 
sorry to say it, I have not found a woman, and 
there are few, if any, men, truly acquainted with all 
that pertains to the present food obtainable for the 
rearing of children, for the rearing of man. For 
example, in 1895, upon my arrival at a town which 
is universally credited with being in the very heart 
of science, I crossed the street to again view what 
is said to be, architecturally, as perfect a cathedral 
as there is in Europe. I soon found myself in the 
midst of clergymen and priests who had come from 
every quarter of the globe. Being familiar with the 
building I soon returned to the attractive court and 
sat down to rolls and tea. Upon paying the bill 
(60 cents, indicating the class of hotel) just across 
from my table cans of milk were being taken from 
a mass of garbage in a covered van, with the in- 
signia of the Emperor on it. Unlike the remainder 
of the visitors, I began investigating the conditions 
of the people living in the seven streets under the 
shadow of that beautiful cathedral. Being familiar 
with the question, I was not surprised to find that, 
of every ten born, there were during the first twelve 
months four or five deaths. While these per- 
centages are above the average, they, or similar 
conditions, everywhere prevail. 

Doubtless the largest percentage of university 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 9 

men, scientists, and students of books is to be 
found in France and Germany. Yet, in this vital 
question, to wit, normal milk production and dis- 
tribution, while the world's most costly dairies 
present some most unscientific conditions, it has 
been almost impossible, due to the filth and stench, 
for me, without first covering my face with a hand- 
kerchief, to quickly walk through some of the cow- 
stables of reputable French and German dairies. 
For man's well-being, rather than the intelligence 
which is indispensable, this denotes the ignorance 
which is destructive. 

It is not so much this enormous infant mortality 
which interests me as it is the enfeebled, degraded 
and inhuman condition of the living, to which I 
would call the attention of prohibitionists and re- 
formers. 

With bodies and brains so imperfect, how can 
there be intelligence and progress? I wish to em- 
phasize the fact that, the higher or the lower con- 
dition of man is indexed by, in its full sense, the 
perfection or imperfection of the food supply. Yet, 
in no single spot under Christian rule can there be 
found, in their relation to the production, preserva- 
tion and use of food, proper conditions ; and what is 
still more strange and alarming, is that there can be 
found nobody who is working on lines which can 
bring about the desired conditions — is not our edu- 
cational and religious training, to say the least, 
faulty? 

In this connection there arises the question of 
the birth rate. Western civilization is at the pres- 
ent time abnormal. The decrease and the alarming 
source of the birth rate is a speck in our abnor- 



10 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

mali'ty. ' To deal with this speck by itself, ignoring 
the cause, is just as irrational as it would be to try 
to make a speck in a decaying potato sound. So- 
ciety is made up of this sort of specks, and the one 
relating to the birth rate is illustrative of them all. 
The long effusions over race suicide and eugenics 
show nothing but ignorance of biology. But pro- 
vided we can do no better by them than we are 
now doing, is an increase of the birth rate and the 
number of people desirable? when it is considered 
that: 

First — At recent prices, the entire produce of the 
earth year by year would not cover the cost of re- 
storing the fertilizing elements taken from it. 

Second — The earth is not producing sufficient to 
properly feed and sustain all of its inhabitants. 

Third — At recent prices, the earth's production is 
insufficient to properly clothe and house all the 
people. 

Fourth — At recent prices, the produce of the 
earth would not return a fair compensation for 
labor, and for the proper maintenance of farm im- 
provements. 

Fifth — Prior to commercialism there was never 
relatively so large a decrease in the world's food 
production, and so large an increase in the number 
of people in a state of hunger and starvation, more 
especially shown since 1890. 

Sixth — This brings out the fact that, though 
under the guise of philanthropy, they would make 
the public so believe, the monopolists and central- 
ists cannot in any sense provide for a small fraction 
of the people they pauperize. 

While these letters will barely touch upon the 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 11 

economic and social questions, there will be in them 
sufficient to explain to a reasoning mind, why the 
birth rate is so influenced, and its most harmful 
source; and also why, rather than good health, 
early deaths, feebleness and short lives result. 

A thorough acquaintance with the food prob- 
lem will give the key to sociology. 

Halt, to rulers, publicists, lawyers, clergymen, 
artisans, socialists, cooperators, anarchists, before 
going further, I say — Halt! Let us see where we 
are. Because this data alone shows that the super- 
structure of Christendom is false, unsound, and 
disintegrating. It shows that, prior to making the 
foundation sound and solid, it is a physical impos- 
sibility to better social conditions one iota. It 
should not need more to stimulate into activity 
everybody. 

This last matter has reference to the past. For 
intensifying these conditions and building abnor- 
mality upon abnormality, and ruin upon ruin, the 
mechanism has only been recently, so to speak, 
fairly completed. Naturally, day by day it is be- 
coming more and more perfected. By looking 
backward you will discover, if you have not already 
done so, that, as, in cycles, there was an increase in 
the iron output, and in all its concomitants, so was 
there an almost incomparably greater increase in 
centralization, the number in poverty and the ex- 
tent of decadence. 

With the small ratio of the people employed, 
with only a small per cent, of them receiving a rea- 
sonable unit of income, try and conceive the enor- 
mous results that would follow if the whole world 
was put to work on a unit of income which would 



12 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

merely give clean environment and a reasonable 
amount of blood-producing food — the desideratum 
for man. Try and conceive such conditions, I say, 
though in reality, they would be as far beyond one's 
grasp as is the distance to the planets. But I be- 
lieve philosophy and science would enable their 
realization. 

There is England, the chief dominating power on 
earth, whose inhabitants are, according to Lord 
Rosebery, impotent. There are myriads of socie- 
ties working for betterment of the, so to speak, 
body politic. There are almost innumerable work- 
ers for centralization, hence for complexity of and 
unmanageable government, and, at one and the 
same time, for regulation and betterment, through 
prescribed laws. 

Now, under present conditions, for all of them 
together to undertake to place peoples on the high- 
way to betterment, would be just as irrational and 
just as impossible as it would be for them to under- 
take to restore to its normal state a decaying 
potato. 

Hence, the utmost is being done to indorse Rose- 
bery's statement, establish the basic principles and 
destroy the evolutionary theories of Darwinianism. 

Man's need, getting as near as possible to nature, 
vegetable and animal life, is profitable work and 
proper food. Established, this would start man on 
the highway to the highest ideal. 

In this destroying centralizing age, it should 
never be forgotten that, the land exhausted, the 
armies and navies maintained, the cost of trans- 
portation, the minerals consumed in and the wares 
turned out of the centralized factories, or districts, 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 13 

where now about 40,000,000 men, women and chil- 
dren are employed, to do what, under modern 
methods, fewer than 10,000,000 could do, is largely 
so much waste. Moreover, do not forget that this 
is done for the purpose of enslaving the masses and 
centralizing wealth and power; and also that, in 
centralized manufacturing under properly organ- 
ized economic conditions the workers should not 
and some day not far distant will not, provided the 
world is not British Indianized, exceed 2,000,000. 
The sooner things are shaped to this end the better 
for mankind. 

Yet, to-day increased sums and almost super- 
human efforts are being made to further centralize 
production, so the world's work will be done by 
still fewer hands. Our good Christian, humani- 
tarian, prohibition, reformation and professional 
charity organization friends, form a part of this 
commercial machine which makes for competitive 
struggles, war, degradation and ruin, and on the 
other hand, which makes The Hague Congress 
seem so farcical. 

Suffice it to say that, within a few years, at par 
value of stock, railways covering $6,000,000,000 
have been bankrupted and reorganized — in some 
instances railways have been put through this proc- 
ess two or more times, profits being thus multi- 
plied. By this means a few men have absorbed the 
wealth and gained the control of the railways. The 
same questionable methods are now being applied 
to industrials. Since the impetus given to trade by 
the high price of wheat in 1898, erroneously called 
the "Leiter Corner," companies representing some 
$7,000,000,000 on properties worth, say, one-fifth 



14 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

of that sum, have been floated. The cost of stock 
held and sold was minus, yet in the absence of 
great failures there is an expression of surprise. 
But nothing is said of the loss of opportunities, the 
all-important matter. 

Such large chips and so many of them were never 
played with before. Nothing but blind ignorance 
was apparent. The world seemed mad. In Wall 
Street, between the hours of ten and three, money 
was turned over 500 and more times. All classes 
offered themselves for shearing. Now they are 
sad, not wiser, and the clouds are thickening day 
by day, the bitterness being intense. 

It is impossible to fittingly condemn this so- 
called high finance. But the helplessness of man- 
kind through the absence of intelligence is to me 
the most alarming feature these frauds have de- 
veloped. Vainglorious, and, if that is possible, 
worse, seem to bs all the movements for uplifting. 



II. 



ON January 18, 1872, practically without means, 
under modern methods, a man laid the foun- 
dation of the world's largest concern, and largest 
individual fortune— exceeding $1,000,000,000. His 
first act was to destroy manufacturing competition. 
This he and four dominating powers effected 
through conspiracy. His second act was to destroy 
the producer of the raw material. This was done 
by playing with marked cards. Six gambling pits 
comprised his thimble-rigging device. He played, 
so to speak, for a syndicate. Sitting in his house, 
he thus gave his orders through his secretary: 
"Give 'era all they'll take — give 'em all they'll 
take." He conducted affairs as do proprietors of 
faro banks, behind breastworks of men, with of- 
ficers and touts, always on guard. In a single bout 
he has swept into his coffers as much as $30,000,- 
000. In this manner his profits and success were 
incomparably greater than in the manufacturing 
part. Upon thereby ruining a single competitor 
or a large body of speculators and producers, he 
became enraptured with joy, an abnormal creature. 
During 1893, in his private office in lower Broad- 
way, a friend — an acquaintance of mine — stood 
over the "ticker" with this man while he was losing 
a million dollars in the stock of a certain railway. 
My acquaintance said to me: "So-and-So was as 
merry over this loss as I would be in losing a 
cigar in throwing dice with a friend." In this you 

15 



16 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

get something of an idea of the world's greatest 
gambler and most important man. 

In 1882 there was an organization formed under 
nine trustees. The direct profits which come in 
day after day, compounding interest, those resulting 
from accumulations and manipulated speculations 
run into hundreds of thousands; a large part of this 
income is deducible by any expert in this line. The 
large profits from gambling now come through 
the seventh pit, known as the New York Stock Ex- 
change, where two or more times thirty millions 
have been obtained dishonestly in a single deal. 
This large income represents more than one- 
fifteenth of the total net income of the whole 
United States. But, if as they should do, the stat- 
isticians estimated the losses resulting from the ex- 
haustion of the soil, depletion of mines, devastation 
of forests, etc., the profits would represent a very 
much larger and more alarming ratio of our in- 
creased wealth, which with time will be more and 
more apparent. 

The manufacturing process performed by this 
concern is of the simplest nature. The products it 
has vended have been inferior to those vended 
under competition. Some of the other products 
in which it is now interested and vending are inju- 
rious to the health and interest of mankind. Sur- 
veillance over transportation and affairs of com- 
petitors is universal and constant. Private matter 
forwarded to the court has been found on the desk 
of the president of this concern within seventy-two 
hours from its mailing. 

For (the purpose of molding public sentiment 
newspapers have been subsidized, as many as one 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 17 

hundred and ten in one State. Failing in this line, 
upon building a university, which is destined to be 
the largest in the world, the founder has succeeded 
in turning the sentiment of (the uninformed in his 
favor. 

Politicians and Government officials are retained 
as counsel. Some or all of the men in this concern 
have been indicted a dozen or more times for al- 
most every act in the category of crime. Because 
of indictment and for fear of his life, the chief was 
smuggled through the States in a sleeping-car for 
years. This man is not a philosopher. He has 
never succeeded in any great undertaking where he 
was not playing with loaded dice and the game was 
not, "heads I win, tails you lose." He always puts 
others to the front to pull the chestnuts out of the 
fire. He is a menace to mankind. This concern is 
a menace to mankind. It was because of its seem- 
ingly visionary schemes that William H. Vanderbilt 
said this concern would dominate all the railways 
in the United States. Truly, among Captains of 
Industry, this man is King. 

Within twenty years all other producers, manu- 
facturers and speculators in their line were ruined. 
The deposits in the institutions dominated by this 
concern are said to be around $425,000,000. These 
men, these affairs, like those of all the large domi- 
nators and dominating interests of the world, can- 
not be painted black enough. 

Now, if the same methods were applied to the 
business of the whole world, why, in a correspond- 
ing length of time, would not there be a like result? 

But the large and controlling interests on the 
globe are dominated by similar methods. The uni- 



18 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

versal unrest and dread are due to this fact. Be- 
fore there can be any uplifting whatsoever, these 
methods must be reformed, or, more correctly speak- 
ing, old and natural methods must be restored. 

The sole object of making this statement is be- 
cause it is illustrative of the larger business interests 
in Christendom which dominate the world. Prac- 
tically speaking, the concern in question has prac- 
ticed, and does practice, in the parent, or its other 
concerns, every dishonest, unjust, revolutionary, 
destructive and criminal method or act practiced by 
large or small businesses. Without a complete 
transformation of methods nothing but centraliza- 
tion and retrogression can result. Those who tell 
us betterment can alone come through legislation, 
publicity, etc., are inexperienced men and unsound 
thinkers. 

In passing from one captain of industry to an- 
other, an illustration of American methods will be 
of assistance to those not familiar with them. In- 
cluding subsidies, say a railway is bonded at a sum 
which will realize on the sale of its bonds from 
$1,000 to $6,000 per mile in excess of the cost of the 
road, and that it is capitalized at $20,000 per mile 
It is at once apparent that the promoter makes a 
profit, and also holds the stock and controls the 
railway. By paying dividends he can generally 
work the prices up to or above par. Upon ceasing 
to pay dividends he can wreck the road and place it 
in the hands of a receiver, cause the shares to be 
assessed and generally buy them in at his own 
price. This is one of the means by which the cap- 
tains of industry have gained their domination 
over the world at large. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 19 

To illustrate, there is a certain railway in this 
country which was capitalized at $100,000,000. The 
cost of construction was below the sum realized 
on the bonds. Dividends upon the stock were paid 
until the shares sold at $130, or 30 per cent, above 
par. The payment of dividends ceased. The com- 
pany was wrecked. A receiver was appointed. An 
assessment of $10 per share was levied upon the 
stock, after which the price of the shares fell to 
$8.25. The capital stock was increased to $200,- 
000,000. Since which time the new shares have 
sold around par and also fallen 20 per cent. In 
some instances, railways have been wrecked several 
times. Thus may a man or a coterie of men con- 
tinually dominate the directorate, buy back the 
shares at a pittance, pile money up by the bushel 
and sow ruin broadcast. 

The fact is that during twenty-six years, on these 
lines, receivers have been appointed for 639 rail- 
ways, representing stock and bonds aggregating 
the vast sum of $6,291,397,000. 

The so-called gilt-edged roads show another kind 
of method for milking the public. For example, 
large blocks of New York Central and Hudson 
River Railway stock were sold to the public at 
prices ranging between $120 and $155 per share, 
the par value being $100. The market price fell 
to $85 per share, since which time it has advanced 
to $156 and fallen to $113 per share. As the capi- 
tal is $100,000,000, anybody can readily see what a 
fabulous amount of money can be made on such 
turns. 

In relation hereto, the purchasers of the stocks 
who have been so unmercifully robbed I do not 



20 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

bear in mind. However, rather than the irration- 
ality applied to gambling in general, I would go to 
the root of the cause. But, that which most in- 
terests me, and mankind also, is the part the actors 
have played in transforming and ruining the 
world, and their present status for wider domina- 
tion. Moreover, there are now to be dealt with in 
the same manner that have been and are applied 
to railways, bonds and stocks of industrial com- 
panies amounting to about $7,000,000,000. 

The reason the American merchant marine has 
not grown in a manner corresponding with that of 
the railway system and industrialism is because it 
has not afforded the same opportunity for swindling 
and money-getting. 

The foregoing will make clear the following 
matter in relation to the position the captain of in- 
dustry holds of whom I am about to speak: 

Up to and extending well into the seventies, 
when, because their clientele was protected, the 
names of Rothschild and Baring were everywhere 
known and honored, there came into the field an- 
other kind of house, another kind of financiering, 
one benefiting cooperators only, and this at the ex- 
ploitation of the populace, of governments, indeed, 
of the world. But, naturally and fortunately, it 
has now come to pass that the world's great co- 
operating banks, bankers, financiers, millionaires 
and schemers are no longer secure, for this captain 
of industry is not an experienced economist, and in 
the nature of things, he has, as I predicted in my 
letter published in London in 1895, been unable to 
maintain his supremacy in great business affairs for 
any length of time. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 21 

The head of this house rather than having at 
once lost his reputation, became a chief of pro- 
moters, wreckers, reorganizationists, centralists and 
one of the chiefs in bringing ruin upon the whole 
world. His railway and industrial financiering 
schemes have run into the billions. This captain 
of industry, in connection with the first-mentioned 
concern, has floated, for instance, such rotten com- 
panies as The United States Steel Corporation, The 
Amalgamated Copper, and the International Mer- 
cantile Marine, which are, if such be possible, while 
not so far-reaching, blacker than his railway finan- 
ciering. In his chain of depository institutions it 
is said that the deposits run up to $372,000,000. 

In affairs of such large moment, was there ever 
in effect such retroaction? Was there ever shown 
a greater absence of intelligence, sound common 
sense, and morality? In relation to the so-much- 
talked-of world supremacy in England, Germany 
and America, I cite these instances as other alarm- 
ing illustrations of its asininity. 

Again, in this ruin, and of the billions of value- 
less stock and bonds, or those above their value put 
out by this captain of industry, and in his exploita- 
tion of the world, it was open to everybody to know 
that, practically speaking, he had as partners, 
backed by all exchanges, the world's great banks, 
great bankers, financiers, moneyed men, brokers, 
and their touts (the world's dominators). 

In taking from the people their earnings and ac- 
cumulations and putting them in the hands of the 
few in sums ranging between $5,000,000 and $200,- 
000,000, thus centralizing wealth, creating poverty, 
depriving men of opportunities, and undermining 



22 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

the foundations of civilization, this man, in his 
sphere, has been captain. He has been as lion- 
like (which in this instance was indispensable) as 
has been his associate previously noticed, catlike. 
Had not the latter committed his acts through 
bribed instruments not only would more have been 
known of him, but possibly his career might have 
been cut short long since. 

Yet, as a known party of the world's ruin, fewer 
than five years ago, in a sense, nobody else on the 
globe held so exalted and unique a position. So 
wise and sound was his philosophy thought to be 
that his judgment was almost universally looked 
upon as being infallible. He had a clientele reach- 
ing into all quarters of the globe. Rather than 
being at the command of the King of England, His 
Majesty practically called upon and dined with 
him. When the British Budget was read, he was 
present as guest of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
and was asked to pass judgment upon the same. 
The Emperor of Germany gave him the keys to his 
estates and treasures. From every quarter and by 
every man whose business was interfered with by 
the Community of Interest this man was appealed 
to for the privilege of doing business, for the privi- 
lege of living on God's earth. For good, or for 
evil, this man's power was almost infinite. He was 
king among rulers of Christendom, conspicuous in 
the church, and in our educational institutions, be- 
cause of his part in commercialism, up to two short 
years ago, so everywhere was the power of this 
captain of industry shown. Fortunately for man- 
kind, he has lost his Aladdinality. 

These days the press is full of the blackest kind 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 23 

of evidence relating to the methods practiced by 
the Community of Interest. This exploiter, if that 
be possible, is being more bitterly denounced than 
was and is the party just referred to. Yet, to-day 
this destroyer has been elected a trustee of a uni- 
versity whose students number 4,500. These cir- 
cumstances are open to everybody, consequently 
to the faculty and students. Is or is not such an 
honor a premium put upon corruption and im- 
morality? 

In an aside, I want to call your attention to the 
power for ruin the domination of $800,000,000 in 
deposits means when in the hands of two men. In- 
terest rates can be and have been advanced 10,000 
per cent, and more. To prevent the election of 
Bryan, and to kill the silver issue, during the week 
preceding the Presidential election of 1900 interest 
rates were advanced from 2 to 25 per cent. The 
day following the election they were dropped to 3 
per cent. Such conditions should nowhere for a 
moment be allowed to obtain. According to late 
reports loans on collaterals in New York now 
amount to about $1,380,000,000. That is, to that 
extent, the banks aid the Community of Interest — 
these men. If it is not this which makes the money 
question complex, what is it? How unlike Scotch 
banking, or the methods of the Bank of France. 
How appalling! 

It is well known that the men in question create 
the stocks and also the banks which loan the money 
on large and safe margins to carry and keep them 
alive; and that the complexity of the money ques- 
tion is due wholly to the fact that nearly all of the 
banking capital and the deposits in the great cen- 



24 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

ters is used for stock and produce gambling. I 
have an exceedingly cautious acquaintance who has 
been a large borrower on stocks at 80 per cent, of 
market price for fifteen years. This year this gen- 
tleman was forced to give his banks a standing 
judgment, the nature of which will best be shown 
by the document itself. 

Form No. 334. 

$ 

New York 190 

On Demand for value received promise to pay to 

NATIONAL BANK OF .... IN NEW YORK, Or Order, 

the sum of Dollars, 

hereby agreeing that said bank shall have a lien upon all property 
of the undersigned and all collaterals pledged by the undersigned, 
now or hereafter in possession of said bank, or under its control, as 
security for any indebtedness of the undersigned now existing or to 
become due or that may be hereafter contracted, with the right at 
any time to demand additional security and with the right, in case 
of failure to comply with such demand for additional security or in 
case of default in payment, to sell without advertisement or notice 
to the undersigned, at any broker's board in the City of New York, 
or at public or private sale in the said city or elsewhere, or to 
otherwise dispose of the same in the discretion of any of the offi- 
cers of the said bank, without notice of amount due or claimed to 
be due, without advertisement, and without notice of the time or 
place of sale, each and every of which is hereby expressly waived, 
applying the proceeds thereof upon the said indebtedness, together 
with interest and expenses, legal or otherwise, the undersigned to 
be liable for any deficiency. 

It is further agreed, that upon any sale by virtue hereof, the 
holder hereof may purchase the whole or any part of such property 
discharged from any right of redemption, which is hereby expressly 
released to the holder hereof, who shall have a claim against the 
maker hereof for any deficiency arising upon such sale. 

It is further agreed, that any moneys or property at any time 
in the possession of said bank belonging to any of the parties liable 
hereon to said bank, and any deposits, balance of deposits, or other 
sums at any time credited by or due from said bank to any of said 
parties may at all times, at the option of said bank, be held and 
treated as collateral security for the payment of this note or the 
indebtedness evidenced hereby whether due or not due, and said bank 
may at any time at its option set off the amount due or to become 
due hereon against any claim of any of said parties against said 
bank. 

In the dry goods field the conditions are very 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 25 

similar. One immense corporation has nearly 
eighty members in various cities, and others have 
fewer numbers, but all these are under this same 
influence. 

This matter is mentioned because better than 
anything else it will convey to many the endless 
grip of government by plutocracy. 

If others read this document with the same feel- 
ings with which I was possessed after reading it, it 
will not soon be effaced from their memories. 

After rising, even through audacity, to the high- 
est commercial power in the world, possessed of 
abnormal income and wealth, is a man honest, is a 
man wise, is a man a philosopher, is a man normal, 
who, for the purpose of increasing that wealth and 
power, will then deliberately commit acts which 
will correspondingly lower himself in the minds of 
the people who make up the world? If not, has he 
been worthy the dictatorship he has held? 

Then there is a third party. While his name is 
not so widely heralded he has in undermining the 
fundamentals of our so-called intelligent civilization 
cut the widest swath of the three. The latter is in- 
comparably the soundest thinker and the ablest 
business man, but his pockets are not so well filled 
as are those of the others. Had it not been for this 
man there would not have been to-day a Com- 
munity of Interest, and such extremes in wealth 
and poverty. Nor, throughout the world, would 
there have been so many men starved to death dur- 
ing the last decade and a half. This man and I 
came from the same county. I know of his earlier 
life and limited educational opportunities. 

In this game of ruin there have been two bodies 



26 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

each composed of four men who with their cocon- 
spirators have performed no small part in the game 
of centralization and universal destruction. In 
each instance they were known as the Big Four. 
Oh! but how they did cut the ground from under 
what we call civilization. They were, of course, all 
common men — good and wise men could not per- 
form such fiendish acts. It is not so long ago that 
one of them was shoveling dung out of cattle pens 
at a wage of a dollar a day. He can to-day shovel 
his own gold out by the million. 

As a part and parcel, there are, as everybody 
knows, the Railway Magnates. Of this crowd all 
well-informed men are familiar with the fact that our 
first millionaire eighty times over was one of them; 
that our first millionaire two hundred times over 
was another. We have rather lost sight of those 
who range in the tens. Such waste, transforma- 
tion and ruin as they have spread over the world 
in various ways is confusing. 

It is worthy of note that, in conducting a mo- 
nopoly, or a railway which can profitably be put 
into the hands of a receiver, economy is not a requi- 
site, for, as in the sound law of supply and demand, 
competition is made inoperative. In this instance 
it is worth remembering that if there is a mountain 
of gold in sight, there is a class of men who, in an 
attempt to reach it, will stop at nothing. If the 
nuggets are numerous and large, men will neither 
peach nor incriminate themselves. With this in 
mind let us take up some of the adjutants and the 
stool-pigeons whom the Captains of Industry first 
made breastworks and their associates. 

Before the trust fever a friend of mine was at- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 27 

torney for works which were doing well on a repu- 
tation of its products. The proprietor needed a 
partner. He asked the attorney to become such, 
saying, "my foreman is too ignorant to be taken 
into the business, and I don't see how I can avoid 
doing so unless you become my associate." No- 
body to-day represents more capital at board meet- 
ings than does the so-called ignorant workman in 
question. I called upon a very prosperous Western 
manufacturer. This man invited me to go through 
his works. I saw one of his laborers in difficulty 
over the measurements of a barrel. His measure- 
ments represented a loss of about $3 a barrel. Hap- 
pening to know something about this, after some 
difficulty, I taught the man to gauge a barrel. This 
man at the instance of another prevailed upon his 
employer to invest $100,000 in a proposition 
brought to him by an acquaintance. This was the 
first hundred thousand which set the huge machine 
in motion. He, who was a common laborer, for 
this service has been made one of the great, rich 
men of the world. 

In another instance I was introduced to one of 
these gentlemen whose name carries great weight. 
This man had for thirty years seen and performed 
almost daily certain labor in which there were sim- 
ple chemical changes. In discussing the process 
and product I found that he knew absolutely 
nothing of the cause and effect. I met another of 
these adjutants with whom I was acquainted at a 
time when he was in a muddle over a $16,000,000 
affair. In a word, the trouble only required the ap- 
plication of the rule of three. Yet he knew not the 
cause of his failure. 



28 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

Another stool-pigeon, I should say, adjutant, is a 
Baptist minister, who, with the exception of his 
employer and master, is doubtless more familiar 
with the inner circle of fiendishness than is anybody 
else. Would the training of a clergyman naturally 
be on business and scientific lines? Otherwise, is 
it desirable that he should through corporate repre- 
sentation become one of the world's dictators? 

From my own experience I might continue these 
remarks throughout our commercial life, or say for 
more than a third of a century with the same rela- 
tive results. It will be seen that education has 
played no part in our great concerns. Brutality is 
the need of commercialism — as everybody must 
know. 

A word more in relation to some of the chiefs of 
"High Finance." One of the great men in the 
world's supremacy is a boy about twenty-five years 
old. He (with others) devotes the early part of the 
day to preventing men from the opportunity of 
earning a livelihood. His evenings are devoted to 
running a Public Bible Class and teaching the doc- 
trines of Christ. 

(Knowing the dishonest methods by which the 
money was obtained, as he does, is not a clergy- 
man, professor, doctor, scientist, or college presi- 
dent, who takes this or other similarly obtained 
money, particeps criminis? Does he not place 
himself below the common fence? Through his 
exalted position, does he not tend to make respecta- 
ble and put a premium on the most far-reaching 
and destructive kind of crime and vice?) 

In financial discussion harvests are interesting, a 
bank statement is interesting, trade expansion or 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 29 

reaction is interesting, prosperity itself is interest- 
ing; but the interest in all of them lies in their bear- 
ing on the stock market. Events are judged, not 
primarily in their bearing on the countries' political 
and economic progress, but in the light of the ques- 
tion, Will they put stocks up or will they put them 
down? In the absence of events, criticism assumes 
much the form of the sporting columns, the re- 
sources, record, and staying qualities of the "bulls" 
and the "bears" being canvassed as if they were en- 
tries at the Derby. 

In order to place the bank reserve above or below 
its requirement for the purpose of influencing 
stocks, all that is necessary is to transfer a few mil- 
lions from one ledger to another, but, practically 
speaking, the removal of a few millions of gold 
from one vault to another across the street affords 
an excuse for a greater influence upon the market. 
If the gold is moved from one side of the water to 
the other it has an influence not only upon the 
bank rates but the stock markets of the whole 
world. 

These things have an influence upon the affairs 
of all mankind. Were it not that they are so tragic, 
would it not make human beings appear like a lot 
of tomfools? 

Whomsoever the Community of Interest decree 
shall not do business in America is doomed to 
failure. 

As is business so is society. Corruption is now 
in the atmosphere we breathe. The masses ridi- 
cule the word honesty and cite as examples to bear 
them out the men who dominate the world and of 
whom I am writing. Students of the lower as 



30 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

well as the higher educational institutions smile at 
the cunning of these men. The effect of commer- 
cialism upon women seems still more alarming than 
upon men. Even public and Sunday-school chil- 
dren under eight years of age talk to their teachers 
about these men and their crimes. Were I to relate 
what I know it would seem as if vice was disre- 
garded almost as much as is honesty. The general 
feeling is one of bitterness rather than jealousy. 

The degree of corruption shown by a people is 
indexed by the business methods they practice, and 
its extent by the opportunities presented. During 
the speculative period following the Franco-Ger- 
man War, my time was largely spent between 
Berlin and London. The sums played for in cor- 
porate swindling were as large as the public could 
deal with. It so happened that I had means of 
getting a good deal of inside information, and I 
feel justified in saying that things there were about 
as black as the perpetrators knew how to make 
them. For instance, in the Grant-Samson-Emma- 
Mine flotation cycle, Grant floated companies, if 
my memory serves me, represented by a capitaliza- 
tion of nineteen millions sterling. Within a few 
months the market value of all the stocks fell to 
something like one million sterling. This is a fair 
illustration of practically all the new Stock Ex- 
change business in England and Germany during 
my residence abroad at that time. Moreover, more 
than once did I hear men chuckle over the millions 
sterling made in sending rotten British iron to the 
Yankees in payment for the American railway 
bonds which had been and were then coming into 
England. Everybody knows about the later 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 31 

Hooleys and Wrights, and other swindling and im- 
potency connected with the recent large bank fail- 
ures in Germany, especially those shown to be back 
of some of the new companies. 

Everybody knows that universal tipping, bribing 
and vice in the Old World runs back to the begin- 
ning of history. Yet, I was shocked when I saw 
that to prevent rejection and make a sale five or ten 
pounds for the steward or groom had to be added 
to the price of every American horse sold in Lon- 
don while I was there. But the bribe-takers I had 
in mind at the start were the German and English 
customs and revenue officials whose honesty has 
so long and commonly been paraded alongside the 
dishonesty of the Yankees. In this connection I 
would like to cite two not exceptional incidents 
which came directly under my eye. In a suburb of 
Berlin, not far from the old palace in Charlotten- 
berg, an establishment, in which I was experiment- 
ing, was seized by a revenue official, and, upon pay- 
ment of 30 marks, or $7.50, by the proprietor of 
the property, released within the hour. Upon the 
payment of half a crown, 60 cents, I saw a lot of 
cigars pass the customs in London. This out- 
Yankees the Yankee. Yet, the moment one comes 
in contact with strange Germans or Englishmen at 
the first opportunity American honesty is ques- 
tioned. 

Let me add that, while imperialists, commercialists 
and captains of industry exploit mankind, land and 
sea, any poor fellow here who attacks their fraudu- 
lent stocks is imprisoned ! And also add that, as a 
whole, men are not competent to combat these 
things. Therefore, this should be recognized and met. 



III. 

RELATIVE to the brutality in our commercial 
corruption, I am not going to enter here into 
animal husbandry and the meat supply; nor into 
the extent of adulteration; nor into the six or seven 
pints sold for a gallon; nor into the twelve or four- 
teen ounces sold for a pound; nor into the deterio- 
ration of wares, morality, etc., but will say a word 
regarding our "Death Line." In one class of labor 
men above thirty-five are not given employment; in 
another the limit is forty-five. The Community of 
Interest is about starting works with 2,000 men 
where the age is forty, the old employees above that 
age already having been discharged. The purpose 
is, of course, to get a larger output per capita. This 
line of procedure seems to me to be about as low as 
men can stoop. 

The series of articles in McClure's Magazine, in 
which Mr. Lincoln Sterfens has exposed the mis- 
government of St. Louis, Minneapolis, Philadelphia 
and other cities has puzzled us with the mystery of 
dominate baseness. But in his latest essay, "Ene- 
mies of the Republic," Mr. Steffens sums up his ob- 
servations in one appalling generalization that dis- 
pels the mystery and leaves us face to face with the 
naked, hideous truth. "We cannot run round and 
round in municipal rings and understand ring cor- 
ruption: it isn't a ring thing. We cannot remain in 
one city or ten and comprehend municipal corrup- 
tion; it isn't a local thing. We cannot stick to a 
party and follow party corruption ; it isn't a partisan 
32 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 33 

thing. And I have found that I cannot confine 
myself to politics and grasp all the ramifications of 
political corruption. It isn't political corruption. 
It's corruption. The corruption of our American 
politics is our American corruption, political, but 
financial and industrial, too." 

It is the solemn fact that the degradation of our 
Government is the work of that very "better ele- 
ment" to which we look to reform it. Boodlers do 
not sell franchises to themselves; they sell them to 
"substantial citizens." For every disreputable 
bribe-taker there is a respectable bribe-giver. 

The fundamental cause of corruption, which is 
not confined to America, is centralized commercial- 
ism. In a word, the cause lies in the false methods 
and dishonest practices which result in centralized 
production, be that of whatever nature. 

What I want to come to, and why I write these 
last pages, is this : The universal impression seems 
to be that our enormous combinations are the out- 
growth of superior intelligence, while the reverse is 
true. The facts are that they resulted from ex- 
tremely productive virgin soil, favorable climatic 
conditions, false and rotten methods, and criminal 
corruption; that every effort has been put forth to 
make the United States appear to be passing 
through an epoch of unequaled prosperity, while 
the facts are that our wastefulness, despoliation and 
retrogression are unparalleled; that in order to imi- 
tate the pernicious industrialism and centralization, 
which we inherited, and have intensified, and in the 
hope of renewed life and in catching up with us, 
commercial and technical schools are springing into 
existence in the cities throughout Europe. 



34 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

These commercial schools are a part of commer- 
cialism and centralization. Admitting the sound- 
ness of the principle, the number of men who would 
be advanced by it is an infinitesimal part of one per 
cent, of the people. To-day, in New York, hun- 
dreds of college-bred men are receiving only about 
half the pay of a policeman — only the other day 
one of them entered the police force. These young 
men are discontented and unhappy, say their life is 
a veritable hell. For some eighteen months a trust 
has been fruitlessly seeking a head. The compen- 
sation offered is $50,000 per annum. If this cen- 
tralization is to last, men to fill these places are the 
burning need. To fill them, it will require the crea- 
tion of another kind of Adam. At present man 
is too little and too perverted. Gentlemen and great 
men are so born. If it were not so, would it be rea- 
sonable to believe that professors and clergymen, 
as at present taught, could educate men to fill a 
high commercial position? 

The men and women of the American Institute 
of Social Service have undertaken the regeneration 
of man. Lectures now being delivered by the men 
who brought about the unrest are being reported 
by the society. This was instituted by this society 
of reformers. I cannot conceive of anything more 
degrading, more revolutionary, more destructive. 
It shows either dishonesty or ignorance. 

Let one desiring to get an insight into real, sound 
business, as applied to commercialism, visit Glas- 
gow, Scotland, and study the clever Scots' methods, 
beginning with the making of the Clyde navigable 
for ships of deepest draft, giving special attention 
to their sound banking methods, and to the shrewd 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 35 

manner in which shipbuilding was transferred to 
that center. Before departing, though, one should 
get a taste of the admixture of Puritanism, com- 
mercialism and degeneration, for nowhere else is 
it so intermingled and nauseous. 

On the other hand, leave the sordid commer- 
cialism and take up a higher ideal. Enter France 
and study it in its true light. Take up the diffusion 
of wealth and the cause — moneys by inheritance 
showing thirty times greater than in Britain. Study 
the peasantry and note their dowries. Study and 
compare the Bank of France with that of the ac- 
cursed system practiced in America. Among other 
things on the continent of Europe, while anything 
but perfect, study agriculture, in order to learn how 
wasteful and ruinous is the whole American agricul- 
tural system. Indeed, as, at present, among the 
larger peoples, being the world's wisest, most con- 
servative and best-poised country, study France. 

With the business methods in vogue since the 
passage of the Cobden corn laws, but accelerated 
during the past two decades, I may say, ten men in 
the United States now dominate our money, in- 
terest rates and credits (banks, financial trusts and 
life insurance company funds) : transportation rates 
(railway and steamship lines); industrials: petro- 
leum, coal and minerals: prices of produce (conse- 
quently prices of farming lands), and, in some in- 
stances, iron and structural building, to say nothing 
of universities, churches, and organized charity. 

This little body of ten men is known as "The 
Community of Interest." It covers the word, more 
recently made hateful, supremacy. 

I make mention of these men: (1) Because dur- 



36 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

ing the past two decades they have largely shaped 
the world's history. (2) Because without complete 
knowledge of their methods one is unfitted to 
soundly deal with business or social affairs. (3) 
Because without knowledge of these methods and 
something of the conception and conduct of life, 
nobody is prepared to advantageously take the 
reins of government. (4) Because they are cap- 
tains of centralization. (5) Because these methods 
deprive men of opportunities and prevent, in 
any single direction, the attainment of better- 
ment. (6) Because in ignoring the loss of 
opportunities and the exhaustion of the soil all 
discussions relating to man's welfare are irrele- 
vant. (7) It will be noticed that I have not said 
anything about the losses sustained on the ex- 
changes. This is, because in comparison with the 
undermining of all that pertains to ideal social con- 
ditions, they appear insignificant. 

This Community of Interest purchases of itself 
iron ore, limestone, coal, coke, billets, rails, struc- 
tural iron, machinery, extends railways, etc., con- 
tracts for erecting buildings, and centralizes the 
people in towns and cities, bringing to our country 
an immense number of undesirable immigrants, 
etc., etc. The captains of industry who created it 
have torn our country asunder, metamorphosed 
and hurt the whole world. 

To make possible this Community of Interest it 
was necessary: (1) To turn the balance of trade in 
favor of the United States. (2) To create ab- 
normal activity in trade. (3) To centralize peo- 
ples, husbandry and manufacturing. (4) To mold 
public sentiment in favor of its trade methods. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 37 

To obtain this so-called balance of trade and at- 
tract gold to the centers for speculative purposes, 
new territory with rich virgin soil was opened up — 
it is estimated that through this means our stock 
of gold has reached one-fourth of the world's total. 

For the purpose of control, the railways, I repeat, 
were bankrupted and reorganized to an extent, at 
par value of shares, exceeding six thousand million 
dollars. To gain this end, undermine the investor 
and ruin the world's agriculture and animal hus- 
bandry, it was also necessary, of course, to domi- 
nate the exchanges. 

To stimulate unprecedented speculation for the 
purpose of centralization, a large tonnage, in- 
creased railway earnings and an endless chain of 
currency payments were indispensable. The flota- 
tion of industrials would start money rolling, and a 
large iron output would increase tonnage and rail- 
way earnings. The only means of achieving these 
ends lay in the control of and application to indus- 
trials, especially those for the manufacture of iron, 
the same nefarious swindling methods that had 
been and are applied to the financiering, construc- 
tion and conduct of railways. Hence, the flotation 
of industrials. In the meantime the banks and in- 
stitutions where money could be centered were 
brought under domination. 

The first requisite was to issue and sell a lot of 
worthless shares. The second, to let the bottom 
drop out of the market. The third, according to 
precedent, receiverships and reorganizations. In 
this manner the money enters the pockets of the 
bankers, financiers and promoters and the shares 
come back into their hands. For example, there 



38 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

are the Amalgamated Copper and the United States 
Steel companies, put out by and under the leader- 
ship of the heads of the two large chains of banks, 
differing only in capitalization. That their rotten- 
ness would make short work of them was, of 
course, a foregone conclusion. 

In regard to the losses sustained on the ex- 
changes through speculation, in this connection, 
that is of too minor importance to dwell upon. But 
control of the products the producer sells and pur- 
chases destroys opportunities and robs civilization 
of all there is in it. This is the primal question. 

Believing they will pay, are not organizers of 
such companies men void of reasoning power? 
Otherwise, as destroyers, can words fully depict 
their atrociousness? If the school system was edu- 
cational, as suffragists, would the so-called edu- 
cated have permitted the prevalence of the present 
conditions? 

For favorably molding public sentiment the press 
did not succeeed in reaching the hearts of the peo- 
ple. But, I repeat, the endowment of universities 
was hit upon by one of the captains of industry. 
Though "they," to borrow the words of Lord 
Bacon, "bring forth cobwebs of learning, admirable 
for the fineness of thread and work, but with no 
substance or profit, avoiding the things that come 
home to men's business and bosom," these sub- 
sidized universities have proven a monumental suc- 
cess. This web has not only snared America, but it 
seems to have snared the world. 

The increase in our stock of gold, the increase 
in railway tonnage and earnings, and the popularity 
in towns and cities of our educational fad, all il- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 39 

lustrate the significance of the immediate preced- 
ing statements. 

In 1898, the year of our largest exports, the grain 
tonnage (wheat, flour and maize), including that 
shipped by water, was only 12,000,000 tons. Not- 
withstanding the decrease in this kind of tonnage, 
for five years ending June 30, 1902, according to re- 
turns put out by the Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion, the railways show an increase of 458,000,000 
tons. The number of tons carried one mile in- 
creased 62,150,000,000. In the same report we 
learn that there has been a large and steady in- 
crease in earnings. In 1897 they were $1,122,000,- 
000, against $1,890,000,000 ending June 30, 1903. 
Three months later the earnings were running close 
upon $2,000,000,000. Herein is shown in trade the 
levy of a tax exceeding one-third our annual net 
income. 

What was the cause of this phenomenal increase 
in tonnage? Let us see. In 1894 the iron output 
was 6,600,000 tons; in 1897, 9,700,000, and in 1902 
around 19,000,000. This, with the raw material, 
finished products and natural concomitants, created 
the increased tonnage. In May, 1902, the output 
was 1,755,000, or at the rate of 21,000,000 tons per 
annum. For speculative stimulus this month's 
tonnage alone would be worth more than the whole 
year's grain exports. 

It is because it is the incentive of the stock ex- 
change gambling that iron is called the barometer 
of trade. Rather should iron be known as the 
barometer of wastefulness, retrogression and in- 
creased starvation, because of the large part it plays 
in centralizing and transposing production and peo- 



40 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

pies. It causes the migration of peoples and re- 
minds one of the old adage, a rolling stone gathers 
no moss. 

Whatever has taken place in these directions, 
has, of course, been shared in by all branches of in- 
dustries, and also by immense activity in cities. 
For example, the annual importation of precious 
stones has during these years increased from 
$2,400,000 to $30,000,000— how many were smug- 
gled into this country nobody knows. To me this 
incident speaks volumes. Upon whom are those 
gems found, upon the farmers or upon those sup- 
ported by them? 

This all seemingly gives that appearance of 
prosperity and diffusion of wealth, so constantly pa- 
raded before the people, even by our President. 
This illusory appearance of the diffusion of wealth 
is, of course, due: (1) To the high price of wheat 
in 1898.; (2) to the money put in motion through 
the same and the flotation of industrial companies 
represented by a capitalization of about $7,000,000,- 
000; (3) to the higher cost of material and living 
expenses. When, moreover, a handful of men re- 
ceive a large part of the net income of the country, 
when, in the savings banks of the world, nine per 
cent, of the deposits are in New York City, how is 
it possible for the unit of income to remain the 
same, especially when it results from exhaustion of 
the soil and the degradation of the farmer? 

The captains of industry have literally trans- 
formed the United States. To build anew West- 
ward they ruined the rural East. Excepting in 
China, this had the same disastrous effect upon the 
whole rural population of the world — the cities, of 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 41 

course, being a sequence. To obtain their so- 
called vested rights, over which they are such 
sticklers, they have made agriculture unremunera- 
tive, thus, in part or in whole made the property of 
1,000,000,000 people in farming and farming village 
communities practically worthless, having played 
no small part in the increasing starvation of the 
East Indians, Russians, etc., and now that the cap- 
tains of industry having been transformed into the 
Community of Interest, it, by the same nefarious 
methods under which it invaded the European 
grain and meat markets, is preparing to enter and 
British Indianize China, where 400,000,000 people 
are better fed than are any other corresponding 
number on the globe. That is, they have attacked 
largely, and are now attacking, vested rights in the 
land of the world — its productivity, our daily bread 
supply. 

If the Community of Interest apply to the world's 
industry the same methods that the captains of in- 
dustry who compose it heretofore applied to agri- 
culture, transportation and industries, if left undis- 
turbed, it can undermine and destroy the central- 
ized industries of the world. And when manufac- 
turing enters China and Japan it will bring into 
competition their cheap labor (and sound reason- 
ing), which is inferior to none and may possibly 
prove to be superior to that of our boastful Anglo- 
Saxon. 

Among other things, the normal requirements of 
iron and its products are less than half the capacity 
of our plants and factories. The moment the Com- 
munity of Interest ceases to purchase from itself, 
our mills, or through competition, those of other 



42 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

countries, must close. Moreover, the moment it 
ceases to maintain tonnage and rates there must 
naturally follow a decrease in railway earnings. 

On the other hand, we had in 1903 a cotton crop 
worth between $600,000,000 and $700,000,000. In 
addition to cost of crop, rather than former losses, 
this will increase the farmer's purchasing power by 
a sum exceeding three hundred millions, and ab- 
normally fill our treasuries with gold — the signifi- 
cance of which cannot easily be overestimated. 
Secondly, we have recently been and are now open- 
ing up in the extreme West virgin soil which has a 
productivity elsewhere unknown and also irrigating 
the wildernesses of the West. Thirdly, almost su- 
perhuman efforts have been and are being made 
to move the produce to points where, as in the past, 
it will undermine and take from the world's present 
producers their markets and lives. Fourth, if the 
requirements are met for housing emigrants and 
the natural increase of population, there must be 
great activity in the building trade. So, it is ap- 
parent that we are still about to put into and keep 
in circulation an enormous amount of, not fraudu- 
lent paper, but solid gold, in profits from the soil. 

The moneyed power has entered upon a new 
epoch. All philosophic deductions are at present 
destroyed. Back of the Exchanges and centralized 
industry there is an unprecedented amount of con- 
solidated capital directed by a single head. For 
the basis of Exchange gambling, economic and 
profitable agriculture has been supplanted by the 
number of tons of iron a few thousand men can 
turn out and a few men can financier into consump- 
tion. Defined, it means, that which the few thou- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 43 

sand touts on the Exchanges, and the press, herald 
as prosperity, is indexed by the iron output, the 
acres of land impoverished, the creation and the 
swelling of towns. This exemplifies a new means 
of exploitation. It is the first time in American 
history that the hurtful and alarming Anglicization 
of American husbandry and industrials has shown 
real life. 

These with the centralized holdings of money, and 
some things of relative minor importance, so com- 
plicate the situation that I am reluctant in under- 
taking to forecast the immediate future. In saying 
this much, in relation to the falseness and rotten- 
ness of our business and social affairs, in no way 
do I wish to modify what has been or may be said, 
one iota. 

To me, one of the most extraordinary things is 
that the intelligence of the world was insufficient 
to prevent the captains of industry from at one and 
the same time increasing industries and destroying 
the purchasing power to a point when industrialism 
supplies two months' wants with one month's pro- 
duction. Why, I would like to learn, should prod- 
uce be sold at starvation rates, the result of which 
means the exhaustion of the soil, when, to pro- 
gress, man's abode must be fixed? Why should 
produce be made so low that the farmer cannot be- 
come a purchaser of materials for comfort, if not 
for luxury? 

Now, upon the return of normal conditions, al- 
lowing for the reverse movement of the pendulum, 
what is going to be done with our great surplus ca- 
pacity? Are these mills and factories going to be 
closed? Or, is the Community of Interest going to 



44 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

enter the European field? If the past indexes the 
future, it will do so. It is a menace to all mankind. 

Justice Peter S. Grosscup, of the United States 
Circuit Court, said to the Chicago Merchants' Club : 
"In my opinion the men who have passed off bogus 
securities on the public have done more harm to 
American institutions, to American spirit, unity, 
good feeling and prosperity than if they had delib- 
erately spread over the land pestilence and fever." 

While the world's ruin and unrest lie in this tear- 
ing down of all that has been so long building, and 
that is good, and the methods prevent uplifting, 
that even the great men, Justice Grosscup, for 
instance, take such a limited view of the situation, is 
strange and alarming. 

But for the world's Supremacy, that the three 
great Christian countries, England, Germany and 
the United States, should have taken for their 
Avatchword, Ruin, is more strange and alarming 
still. 

In imitation of British Commerce, beginning 
afresh with our increased iron production and rail- 
way extensions, say, in 1878, without unison of ac- 
tion, or means of their own, a score of men have 
brought upon the world unrest and tremor of dread 
unfelt before. If so much could have been done 
under the then existing conditions, backed by Eng- 
lish and German adjutants, has not the world every- 
thing to fear from the Community of Interest and 
the fiscal systems of England, Germany and the 
United States, each forcefully playing its own part? 



IV. 



AS increased nitrogenous food production and 
per capita consumption are the only index of 
progress and social betterment, and as a decrease in 
same is an indisputable sign of retrogression, let 
us see what, under international commercialism 
and general centralization, Christian governments 
have done in this direction for the 1,000,000,000 
people dominated by them, taking the last decade, 
when the result began to be most apparent, for 
comparison. 

In the United States, for the four years ending 
1896, we had under wheat an average of 34,500,000 
acres only, against 37,044,000 for a corresponding 
period ending 1885, while there was an increase of 
25 per cent, in population. But in 1890-1901, under 
meager but better returns, 39,900,000 acres were 
under wheat. Unless familiar with the subject, in 
looking over the annual governmental reports, one 
will naturally be confused, because due to climatic 
conditions and the opening of new sections the 
acreage yield increased considerably during recent 
years. 

Allowing for the fourfold increase in exports, the 
acreage in and consumption of maize were as large 
in 1885 with 56,000,000 people as during the four 
years average ending 1900, when the population 
was 74,000,000, and the total exports reached 770,- 
000,000 bushels, against 163,000,000 for the four 
years ending with 1885. In order to export such 



46 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

enormous quantities we had to put the price so low 
that it not only undermined our own agriculture 
but that of all countries reached by centralized com- 
merce. 

As this matter is in importance above and before 
all others I will put the proposition in another 
form. Formerly, and under normal conditions, 
about 95 per cent, of the maize crop was consumed 
by our domestic animals. For the four years 
1882-3-4-5 the average number of meat-producing 
animals was 133,839,000 and the population 53,- 
000,000. While for the four years 1897-8-9 and 
1900, with 74,000,000, the average was only 122,- 
535,000. But, at prices which were profitable only 
to herdsmen, who fed their stock on government 
lands gratis, the number had increased until it 
reached 151,400,000 head in 1892. So it will be no- 
ticed that under unremunerative prices and abnor- 
mal conditions we had fewer head to feed and more 
maize to dispose of. But an analytical examina- 
tion of exports, including meats, would give this 
question a still darker coloring. 

Should the reader undertake to verify these 
statements by our government reports he will find it 
impossible to do so unless the subject is familiar to 
him. For instance, in 1899 there were 121,750,424 
meat-producing animals. In 1900 he could make 
little or no headway. But in 1901-2, when the num- 
ber of head was placed at 172,000,000, he would be 
in a state of confusion, because the young had been 
counted for the first time. This was misleading. 
I am sorry to say, I believe it was done to give to 
the world a false idea of our resources, and to aid 
and abet speculation. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 47 

As, in the absence of occupation, food and proper 
enviroment, man is said to be about the lowest crea- 
ture on earth, and as to deprive him of that occu- 
pation is a crime incomparably greater than all 
other crimes combined — it is the creative of crime, 
as animal industry under Applied Biology is behind 
ideal physical and mental improvement, as well as 
commercial improvement — and this question 
should be familiar to everybody — I will carry this 
subject a little further. 

The data having been collected by me prior to 
1879, while residing abroad, is not to hand, so I 
will merely mention one or two of the salient feat- 
ures. To establish our meat export trade, the un- 
dermining and ruination of animal food production 
and animal industry in all settled sections and 
countries throughout the world where there was no 
protection had to be accomplished. In 1877-8 we 
exported to England large quantities of dressed 
beef. The best cuts were retailed over the British 
counters as low as a penny a pound. 

The losses sustained in this single but minor part 
of the game must have run into tens of millions. 
That of itself, of course, is as nothing in compari- 
son with the losses of the people and the momen- 
tousness of the crime. Does not all this show that 
the development of centralization is abnormal and 
wicked? That the present purchasing power is 
largely artificial and temporary? 

The destruction of our animal industry resulted 
in destroying the normal or proper animal industry 
of the world. The finding of some new territory 
where temporarily the number of animals can be 
increased would by no means restore the civilizing 



48 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

effects of animal industry, because heretofore, in 
America, for instance, there were animals on every 
prosperous farm in the land — an absolute essential 
in economic and profitable agriculture and ideal 
civilization. 

"It took Germany nearly two centuries to re- 
cover from the blight of the Thirty Years' War. 
Only in recent years," says Douglas Campbell, 
"has the number of cattle in Germany become as 
great as in 1618." 

Now, who can tell when, if ever, the cattle will 
be distributed as they were and should be in coun- 
tries under Christian rule! As the fundamentals in 
idealism rest upon the idealism of animal hus- 
bandry — this is a matter before and above all others 
combined — do not fail to note this fact. 

In all that have made these conditions, there is 
that which pertains to perniciousness and makes 
the period in question incomparably blacker than 
any other in history. Is it not a travesty on Anglo- 
Saxon intelligence; on Western civilization; on 
Christianity itself? It is portentous. 

In this manner land has been exhausted, farm- 
ing made unprofitable, and the farmer's life made 
bestial, thus unfitting him and all mankind for any 
sort of advancement. On the other hand, charity 
organizations and reformers, largely supported and 
dominated by our Community of Interest, have, by 
making life easy, gilding and making veritable 
hells, where debauchery cannot be curbed, and so- 
ciety an artificial abnormality, attracted these rus- 
tics to the cities, from whence the seeds of immor- 
ality are sown. 

This being accomplished the next step of the re- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 49 

former is to attempt the impossible — namely, re- 
form — until now the world's so-called reformers cut 
no small part in centralization and its appalling re- 
sults — also make a note of these facts. 

In order to analyze the decay of the world's 
animal husbandry a complete knowledge of the en- 
tire realm of modern business is absolutely indis- 
pensable. The matter you read in the daily press 
and periodicals relating hereto, is wholly irrele^ 
vant, as is the case with practically all you read on 
current business and social affairs, because it is 
usually without foundation in fact. 

The hey-day of the United States was in or 
around 1880. Since that time the country has been 
transformed. Acres by the million have been 
robbed of their productivity. Farms by the thou- 
sand have been abandoned. Villages by the thou- 
sand have decayed. Mortgages by the thousand 
have ceased interest payments. The farmers' own- 
ership of wealth in the country has fallen from 55 
per cent, to 21 per cent. The urban population has 
spread and increased. The inhabitants have natu- 
rally degenerated correspondingly. 

No longer ago than 1870, yea 1880, under educa- 
tion given in the little red district schoolhouse, no 
country in Christendom, no other 30,000,000 people 
were so properly fed and environed, and conse- 
quently, broadly speaking, so uplifted and uplift- 
ing, as were the white people of the Northern 
States of America. This is, I believe, undisputed 
by competent judges. That is, there was never a 
country in Christendom where there existed such 
another ideal civilization. These are conditions 
unfamiliar to the remainder of the world. There- 



50 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

fore, there is no non-resident of this country, and 
there are few people living here to-day, who can 
pose as competent critics. The foundation of this 
ideal civilization has been absolutely destroyed; this 
was done by the captains of industry who intro- 
duced British commercial methods. 

These fundamentals, these things without which 
life is not worth living, the Morleys, who come here 
supposedly to study and report upon our social 
conditions, never see. They simply investigate 
centralization, centralists, brutality and the side 
which makes life a veritable hell, for the purpose of 
intensifying the same in the Old World, where 
these things originated and now exist. 

It is impossible to make one not thoroughly ac- 
quainted with Applied Biology comprehend the 
decay of civilization which this data represents. I 
want to go on record as saying that all the subjects 
all mankind are dealing with are irrelevant and ir- 
rational or dishonest and will so remain until ani- 
mal industry is properly dealt with, 



V. 



FOR the purpose of arriving at the social con- 
dition of peoples, on the lines of supply and 
demand, some twenty-odd years ago I began 
making statistical maps of the world's food produc- 
tion and consumption relative to the purchasing 
power. During the last decade of the nineteenth 
century the evident losses from the exhaustion of 
the soil and the running of fertilizing elements 
into the sea have been so distressing to me that I 
will make a few quotations, for example, from 
some of the gentlemen, who, at the instance of 
the Government, have been investigating Russian 
agriculture. 

"In consequence of the terrible and frequent 
famines which of late have devastated Russia, a 
Commission was appointed in the Spring of 1899 
to inquire into the economic decay of the Central 
Governments of European Russia. How greatly 
exhausted the soil has become is evident from the 
fact that, according to the Commission, the ground 
yields now 27 per cent, less than it did thirty years 
ago. The impoverishment of the population has 
been so great that, in spite of the great increase of 
the number of peasants, the number of horses has 
decreased 48 per cent, between 1868 and 1895. As 
so many horses have died of famine, many peas- 
ants have harnessed their wives and children to the 
plough." 

"How frightfully rapid the improvement of 
51 



52 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

agricultural Russia has been, owing to the gradual 
impoverishment of the soil, and owing to the rapid 
increase of direct and indirect taxation, which, after 
all, the peasant has to provide, may be seen from the 
fact that, according to Poljenow, one of the Com- 
mission, the taxes in arrear in the Central Govern- 
ments amounted to 10 per cent, during 1871-1875, 
while they amounted to no less than 42 per cent, 
during 1896-1898. According to Scharopow, the 
rural indebtedness has similarly risen, for it has 
grown by no less than 66.1 per cent, between 1892 
and 1902." 

"If we turn to the official figures supplied by 
the Ministry of Finance, we are able to gauge to 
some extent the position of Russia's agriculture. 
Russia's production of grain per head of popula- 
tion was only 4.9 hectolitres in 1894, as against 5.5 
hectolitres in 1870. This decrease in the quantity 
of grain grown is all the more serious, as the 
quantity of grain exported increased, while the 
quantity of grain harvested fell off. Thus we find 
that during 1890-1894, 6,708,000 tons of grain were 
exported against only 3,132,000 tons exported dur- 
ing 1870-1874." 

"Notwithstanding the frightful and habitual 
dearth of the most necessary food, more than half 
of Russia's exports always consist of corn, flour 
and meal. If the Russian population were properly 
nourished, Russia could not export any grain, but 
would have to import it, as is evident from the 
official figures which have previously been given. 
But the peasant cannot always afford to eat his own 
grain. Immediately after the harvest the Govern- 
ment gathers the taxes, and many taxpayers are 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 53 

left to starve after the harvest is over. Their food 
has been collected by the Government in the form 
of taxes and is sent out of the country in order to 
pay interest on the huge foreign loans which have 
been contracted by the Government for the further- 
ance of Russia's expansionist policy." 

In relation to the distress and unrest in Russia, 
I learned in the London Standard of May 1, 1892, 
that the Czar had asked two hundred of his sub- 
jects in every station of life for a remedy. 

According to the London Times, July 7th fol- 
lowing, Professor Lentz reported to the Czar that, 
"The irrational system of farming practiced by the 
majority of Russian holders can easily lead to com- 
plete exhaustion of the soil. The Russian farmers," 
continued the professor, "are living on their 
capital, in other words, on the fertile elements of 
the soil, to the extent of 725,000,000 rubles a year, 
a system of agriculture which must sooner or later 
lead to the exhaustion of the land, especially in the 
black earth zone." 

These, Lord Rosebery, are among the results 
which come from making the world a granary for 
England, for centralized industrialism. 

The most prejudiced can but admit that these 
official statements from Russia, relating to decay- 
ing agriculture and the cause of unrest are almost 
darker than are my statements, and that they are 
the result of international commerce and central- 
ization. No man in a large business, no man high 
in governmental affairs, no man ranking high in 
education, layman or otherwise, should be without 
the information which would enable him to take up 
his pencil and in a short time work out at once just 



54 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

what this Commission has been working over for 
years. Without being able so to do, so-called edu- 
cation is in effect tragic. 

But, after all, of what good is all this informa- 
tion obtained by the Commission or from any other 
source without the knowledge of the cause and the 
key to the remedy? None whatever! What 
good is there in an educational system which does 
not prevent these conditions and tend to advance all 
mankind? None whatever! But, as there is no 
standing still, rather is a do-nothing or false system 
a curse. 

Statisticians tell us that in Eastern Europe but 
one in each hundred of the population is sufficiently 
nourished. If I read Messrs. Rowntree and 
Charles Booth, and other sociologists aright, 30 
per cent, of the inhabitants in the United Kingdom 
are in a starving condition. From ten years' ex- 
perience in that country I should say that not one in 
four was properly fed and environed. So one 
might continue to the end of the line. When all the 
virgin soil is exhausted, which at the present rate 
it soon will be, in what condition will Christendom 
then be left? 

What these men say regarding Russian agricul- 
ture applies to all countries under Christian rule. 
It strikes at the root of all Russia's ills, the world's 
ills. While absolutely ignored by our so-called 
statisticians, to no country does this apply more than 
to the United States, where its losses are enormously 
greater than are those of Russia. As evidence of 
agricultural ruin we learn that in India during the 
past five decades, as in Russia, more especially dur- 
ing the past two decades, deaths due to starvation 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 55 

have increased some thousands per cent., the same 
conditions encircling the earth. 

Upon this exhaustion of the soil, and starvation 
wages for 90 per cent, of the population of the 
world, every large city and town has been built, 
as has been every large fortune. There have been 
periods when the agricultural losses within a few 
months would cover the cost of building up another 
degraded London to again degrade the country and 
the world. 

To-day, in New York, artisans are receiving for 
an eight hour day 250 times more than Indian and 
100 times more than Russian farmers receive for a 
long day's work. For female stenographers and 
typewriters there is as wide a difference. These 
women are usually graduates of the grammar or 
high school. Never have I found among them one 
who is grounded in English, or one competent to 
correct the simplest errors that might appear in the 
manuscript from which she is copying. Besides a 
home, an ignorant, obstinate, worthless female 
house servant earns 60 and 24 times more than the 
Indian and Russian farmers. For schooling New 
York children, and paternalism it costs almost 20 
to 8 times more. In this one direction we have 
a per capita expenditure exceeding that of the 
world's per capita income. Artisans' houses have 
hot and cold water, toilet, bathing, cooking and 
other conveniences and comforts known to but a few 
of the richer classes in the remainder of the world. 

As these abnormal conditions obtain in New 
York, the men become less efficient, less reliable 
and more soured. The results are directly the re- 
verse of those so long and ardently hoped for. 



56 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

Their reading has played no small part in accelera- 
ting these conditions. 

According to recent estimates, 3,000,000 or five- 
sixths of the people of New York City, are 
foreign born or children of foreign-born parents. 
In other cities there are two or three millions of 
the same classes who live in similar conditions. So 
we have in our great cities from five to six millions 
of people who have been transformed from a lowly 
or starved condition to that of one in which they 
are well fed and clothed — transferred, practically 
speaking, into Elysium. These people are not only 
corresponding with those all over the world, but 
they are continually travelling back and forth. Is 
it surprising that, through their agents, the railway 
and steamship companies (the Community of In- 
terest) can move the starving, metamorphose man- 
kind, and create universal unrest? Is it not sur- 
prising that there are not more Kitchener outbreaks ? 
Is it not class building of an alarming sort? Is it 
not anarchistic and revolutionary? Is it not a de- 
stroyer of vested rights? How long can it last? 

These are among the fundamental penalties of in- 
ternational commerce and centralization. Under 
these conditions all other things put together pale 
into insignificance. Then why do we allow the 
practice of present methods? For, if charity were 
desirable, the unit of income is insufficient to either 
house, or clothe, or feed, mankind ; for with an ex- 
hausted soil, and an empty stomach, Christianity 
is helpless — leaving in sight little or nothing but 
poverty and bestiality. 

For twenty-five and more years, day by day, as 
never before, the food supply of countries under 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 57 

Christian rule has been decreasing in quantity and 
nutritive value, while the number of people has been 
increasing. Therefore, this being true, good 
government, my premise taken at the beginning, 
has not been met. 

Except that it relates to the future, it is not the 
present which is most alarming. That which is 
most alarming though, is the darkening shadow 
which is steadily enveloping mankind. 

Sufficient has been said relating to the manner in 
which gold has been accumulated in America, re- 
lating to railway and industrial financiering, re- 
lating to the activity in trade, and relating to the 
world's agriculture, to show how the Community 
of Interest was made possible. Its methods are 
false, wasteful, and ruinous. It is a meance to all 
men. It is a meance to all governments. It, with 
our false fiscal system, can ruin any country at 
which it cares to strike. The men in the Commu- 
nity of Interest have not only metamorphosed the 
United States, but they have largely metamor- 
phosed two-thirds of the world, and if unchecked 
will metamorphose the whole of it. 

Given the Captaincy of the Community of In- 
terest, methods and fiscal systems remaining un- 
changed, so falsely, dishonestly and ignorantly 
conducted are current affairs, that, excepting my 
adjutants, I would guarantee that I could beggar 
all men within the sphere of International Com- 
merce. It is noteworthy that I do not mean to in- 
fer that industrialism alone can do this. How long 
a time would this require? Well, now, I prefer 
to avoid the trap so many have fallen into by setting 
an eventful day. Will say, however, that the time 



58 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

required would depend wholly upon climatic con- 
ditions. Could I have years corresponding with 
a number of those in the last decade of the century, 
I would promise to do the job in a relatively short 
cycle. The length of that cycle might be deter- 
mined by the intensity of the brutality displayed. 
In this relation, there would be years when I could 
undo the work of a century. I can name men 
whose abnormality has been shown to be equal to 
this task of ruin. 

Around 1820, one of the world's few intuitive 
men said that British commerce would ruin the 
world. This is the wisest and most important 
economic forecast that has ever come to my notice, 
for commerce has been and is ruining the world. 

In Sheng, the Minister of Chinese railways and 
telegraphs, the world has the only man I can find 
who comprehends its affairs to-day, also who reads 
the future as I see it, aright, and who comprehends 
the white peril. 



VI. 

A SPEECH delivered by Lord Rosebery, No- 
vember 26, 1903, contained the following 
statements: 'The first result of Mr. Chamberlain's 
policy would be to plunge Great Britain into bitter 
fiscal warfare with our cousins in the United States, 
as the result of which Great Britain would lose 
everything and gain nothing. It would mean a 
practical severance far more deplorable than a 
fiscal severance, and would blight the fairest hopes 
of the two nations." 

In summing up Lord Rosebery said, "that Mr. 
Chamberlain had not proved his case, and that the 
evils of which he complained existed only in his 
imagination. A real remedy for any existing ad- 
verse conditions could be reached by stimulating 
practical, technical and commercial education, re- 
ducing the national expenditures and the drink bill 
of the people, encouraging the growth of cotton 
within the empire, teaching commercial travelers 
how to study the tastes of the people they visited, 
and by other simple and practical steps, which 
would be a better training for race competition than 
mandates for negotiation with foreign countries." 

"The world," said Rosebery, "is England's 
granary." 

In the first instance, Lord Rosebery makes man 

appear littler than even I believe him to be, and, 

according to statistics, points toward retrogression. 

In the second, there is in the commercial struggle 

59 



60 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

no superior education or talents to vie with in 
America. In the third, it would be a long road that 
led to England's independence in cotton raising. 
But, under existing methods, suppose she raised her 
own cotton, of what avail would it be to her? 
None whatever, as every publicist and business man 
ought to know. In the fourth, the drink is a 
biological question pure and simple. There are 
other single things that play an incomparably 
greater part in feebleness, worthlessness, and mor- 
tality, which on the contrary, might be made to 
operate for betterment. To see in the all important, 
absolute neglect, and in the minor questions, mil- 
lions chasing impossibilities, is, to say the least, 
exasperating. Reports that Britons expend £25 
per head or £1,000,000,000 annually on drink are 
void of facts. It is impossible, and always will be, 
to build on falseness. In the fifth, a more detailed 
and longer reply is called for, as in this the funda- 
mentals relating to these questions must of neces- 
sity be touched upon. 

In "Prosperous British India," Mr. William 
Digby, C. I. E., regarding India, says: "In the 
second quarter of the century just ended there were 
two famines and 500,000 deaths. Within ten years 
—1891-1900—19,000,000 of our fellow subjects 
have died of famine." That is, when worked out, this 
shows that deaths due to famine during this period 
have increased 9,500 per cent, yet there have been 
years when British bread was largely composed of 
the flour taken from the mouths of these miserable 
creatures. In Russia and Eastern Europe there has 
been a similar relative change in the conditions. 
To a greater or lesser degree the decreased food 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 61 

supply, which is at the root of the trouble, applies 
to Christendom, the exceptions largely being in new- 
countries where there is virgin soil. 

For example, according to statistics, there was 
between 1881 and 1897 a direct shrinkage of $5,- 
000,000,000 in the value of farming lands in Great 
Britain. The indirect losses it is impossible to esti- 
mate. But they were incalculable. It is claimed by 
influential Englishmen that there are 12,000,000 or 
30 per cent, of her people on the brink of starva- 
tion, with, as a sequence, an ever-increasing per- 
centage. From my own experience, I repeat that 
not one in four of the inhabitants is properly fed 
and housed,, or environed. 

According to the press, Mr. Chamberlain says: 
"There is no country in the world where such a 
large proportion of the population was on the verge 
of hunger and distress as in Great Britain.'' All 
this being true, does the volume of England's manu- 
factures and foreign trade indicate prosperity? 
Rather, does it not represent her degree of de- 
cadence ? 

The percentage of shrinkage in farm values in 
the Eastern and older States of America far ex- 
ceeds that in the United Kingdom. To promote 
English commerce the United States (and, of 
course, the remainder of the world) has sold Great 
Britain hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of 
food at a price from below to one-fifth its cost of 
production. It has not only sold this produce at a 
price less than it would have cost in England for 
fertilizers to raise it, but it has sold produce for less 
than one-half the value of the fertilizing elements it 
contained, and these only to be run into the sea. 



62 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

Under British rule there are 300,000,000 people 
who have cost, to raise, more than they are worth. 
It would be better for them and for the world if 
they were out of it. These are among the penal- 
ties mankind has paid commercialism for laying the 
foundation of ruin. Early in the last century it was 
said British commerce would ruin the world. It is 
now well on the way to do so. 

Was there ever such falsity, ignorance and bru- 
tality? Is there still any one so blind as to be- 
lieve that Great Britain can continue to sell her 
manufactures everywhere at a profit, and that the 
world will, or can, long continue to supply her with 
food and raw material at so great a sacrifice ? Stop 
and think for a moment of sending food and raw 
material 5,000 to 10,000 miles to be returned in 
manufactures to equally clever people for consump- 
tion. Why, at a price below its cost, should we 
transport cotton and food to the centers of England 
and Germany for those countries to manufacture, 
return and distribute ? Why should this cotton pass 
through so many unnecessary hands? Why should 
there be this enormous waste in transportation? 
The end of it all is inevitable, and at no distant 
day. 

Provided there can be no change from unsound 
to sound methods, I see only peaceful decay, like 
that, for instance, in British India, or in uprisings 
like those at Kishineff, Russia ; or in urban-rural 
wars. We have before us the unrest of Europe. 
We have all seen the growing bitterness in the 
United States. Will our well-fed people submit to 
being crushed? But for the reason that they have 
not taken advantage of the suffrage to prevent this 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 63 

common robbery, I should say emphatically no. 
Moreover, America, like England and Germany, is 
in need of a great leader. 

I believe that Mr. Chamberlain has a full realiz- 
ing sense of the calamity about to fall upon Great 
Britain. His inability to offer a remedy, when 
there are so few pioneers, is a source of regret to 
me. Patchwork, at the best, can but be of tempo- 
rary duration. 

Not so very long ago a proposition for cor- 
recting certain great evils was presented to Lord 
Salisbury, evidently by a committee of some influ- 
ence, otherwise it could not have obtained an audi- 
ence. The manner of his lordship was cynical and 
the replies to the carefully prepared statements were 
throughout the interview irrational. Moreover, his 
manner was supercilious and unworthy a man 
holding so high a position in the world. When one 
sees so much disinterestedness and irrationality one 
can but wish there were some men fundamentally 
trained and experienced and more built on the lines 
of our Lincoln. 

This calls to mind an incident which occurred m 
1877, at the dinner table of Bernard Samuelson, 
M. P. Mr. Samuelson began attacking our tariff 
system. In my reply, I said, England derived a 
large revenue from the slickest, most prohibitive 
and greedy on the one hand, and clever on the 
other, pieces of protection I had ever heard of. At 
this, Mr. Samuelson became rather excited. 

"Tell me what it is," said he, "and I will see that 
the tariff is removed within twenty-four hours." 
I pointed out the product and detailed the particu- 
lars. Rather than twenty-four hours, more than 



64 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

twenty-four years have past. Nothing is said 
about it. The protection still obtains. Yet in this 
there is involved a vital economic principle which 
America, all the world, if familiar with the concep- 
tion and conduct of life, would, or should, remedy. 

In, if not mistaken in the year, 1877, in the town 
hall at Manchester, England, General Grant, in a 
reply to an attack on our fiscal system, said: "I 
remember having read that when it was to her in- 
terest, England had protection." This hit the nail 
on the head. When she thinks it to her interest 
she has protection. She now has protection of for 
the remainder of the world the most uneconomic 
sort. For good or evil, England is for herself, even 
unto humiliation. But her fiscal system shows the 
absence of foresight. It is for the day only. 

From anything I have said or may say, pray do 
not class me among protectionists. I believe trade 
should be as free as air. I believe there should be 
no paternalism whatsoever. But, I also believe 
countries should all be on a footing of equality. 
That no country should permit a class or another 
country to rob it of its native productivity or permit 
exploitation of any character. 

Before and above all else whatsoever, I mean the 
laying of a solid and indestructible foundation. 
This can be done in no wise other than through 
Applied Biology, carrying to a logical deduction 
the carbohydrates in the earth's products on the 
one hand and the albuminoids on the other. 

This would begin at the root of education. This 
would begin at the root of economics, at the root of 
governmental affairs, at the root of sociology, at 
the root of physical and spiritual well being. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 65 

Is there in the 400 agricultural experimental 
colleges that are expending tens of millions annu- 
ally, or in the thousands of educational institutions 
that are also expending tens of millions annually, 
one who can take pencil in hand and illustrate this 
proposition, step by step, until the evolutionary 
stages reach ideal civilization ? If so, can he demon- 
strate the same practically? If there be such I 
should indeed be glad to meet him, and for this 
cause, the more of them there are the better. If 
there be not such how is the layman to understand 
my meaning, and how am I going to make my 
proposition of avail? This, aside from my health, 
is the chief thing that now disturbs my mind, and 
the chief cause of repeated emphasis. 

Under practical idealism, it would locally re- 
quire the reasonable attention of about all the men 
to produce the food, do the manufacturing and at- 
tend to affairs ; and about all the women to prepare 
the food, attend the families and assist in manu- 
facturing, especially when it can be made ethical. 

For instance, in my chiffonier are handkerchiefs 
made on farms in France which in 1882 cost 25 
francs each — the same are unattainable in America. 
From reel to woven thread again, there is for manu- 
facturer and possessor an ethical influence. Near 
by, are others made in large factories, costing one 
franc. Throughout their life, there is in them 
nothing which elevates. This is illustrative of 
centralized and de-centralized manufacturing. In 
every way, one is and the other is not desirable. 

This would require but little of the modern ma- 
chinery now in use. The so-called great mechanical 
inventions are for centralized factories, transport- 



66 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

ing the natural or raw products to great centers, 
returning the finished products to the starting point, 
and for the maintenance of the artificial, complex 
and unmanageable concentrating and distributing 
system. 

In 1895 I saw as large returns from an acre of 
land where no machinery was in use, as from 
3,000 acres in our Western States, where there was 
in use more or less machinery. In the former in- 
stance there was a handsome profit and ideal en- 
vironment. In the latter the whole world, civiliza- 
tion itself, was the loser, for it was practically on 
the same uneconomic and ruinous basis. More- 
over, in the first instance ideal society and govern- 
ment were made possible, and in the second im- 
possible. 

Mankind can be advanced through applied sci- 
ence only. By this I do not mean measuring the 
distance to, or the study of the inhabitants of 
Mars ; or the development of machinery, electricity, 
radium, remedial measures or any of these things 
whatsoever. I mean Applied Biology. 

In this way men would be given an opportunity 
to earn their bread and environment; to create an 
abundance of vitalized blood, which is the desidera- 
tum in health, robustness, longevity and morality, 
to prevent disease, alcoholism and war, and the 
present irrational discussion of economic fiscal 
systems. In a word, it is the only means by which 
retrogression can be stayed and advancement en- 
sured. 

If men graduate from the grammar schools and 
universities without any understanding of Applied 
Biology are they fitted for the suffrage, to take a 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 67 

hand in governmental affairs or, indeed, for life? 
Is not then, universal suffrage for men a menace? 
Would not the addition of woman suffrage intensify 
the menace? Are not these chiefly the reasons why 
Republics have not endured? On the other hand, 
are not these graduates largely of the brutal ma- 
terial for destructive and immoral commercialism? 
Are not our educational fads for just that purpose 
and no other? 

At a meeting held in London some four years 
since for the purpose of dealing with tuberculosis, 
over which the then Prince of Wales presided, 
among those present were Lords Salisbury and 
Rosebery. After the scientific side of the question 
had been dealt with these noblemen made some re- 
marks admitting their ignorance relating to biology. 
Spencer said, biology is the key to sociology. If 
this be true, and sociology is the science of govern- 
ment, is one without that science fitted to be a 
leader of the people? 

Few men will admit that they know and care 
nothing about the fundamentals of biology. As 
premiers of the greatest power in the world, under 
whom more acres were being exhausted and greater 
numbers were in hunger and starvation than ever 
before, under whom the world is exploited, there 
are still fewer men who would admit, as did Salis- 
bury and Rosebery, at the tuberculosis meeting, their 
ignorance of biology, the conception and conduct 
of life, the key to politics and governmental affairs. 

During our civil war the people of Germany 
were in sentiment with the people of our Northern 
States. They purchased our government bonds 
freely, at prices as low as 40 per cent, of their face 



68 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

value. At the same time the sentiment of Britons 
was with those in rebellion. They purchased of 
them cotton bonds at double the price that the Ger- 
mans paid for some of theirs. The cotton bonds 
are now worthless, while the Germans have been 
able to sell theirs for as much as three times their 
cost. 

The sentiment of the British people favors com- 
mercalism and centralization. That will as surely 
revert to their disaster as did the purchase of the 
Confederate bonds to their holders. This trans- 
formation is already marked in New England. 
Being against all reason, how can the mother coun- 
try escape it? 

In the purchase of these bonds neither of the 
two great Powers displayed any intelligence what- 
soever. Sentiment was the dominating factor. In 
the pursuance of commercialism, in face of current 
affairs, there is shown the same absence of intelli- 
gence, justice and humaneness as was shown in the 
purchase of the cotton bonds. In the production of 
bread and in giving her subjects proper environ- 
ment, England does not put forth a single honest 
effort. But in order to promote speculation and 
centralization through an increase of a few hun- 
dreds of millions of dollars of gold, she expends 
almost as many thousands of millions, gives up tens 
of thousands of lives, destroys a peaceful people, 
and proposes to establish peonage. This is neither 
more nor less than brutalism. 

The British Government has given its people 
greater liberty than has any other government. 
So, when occasion seemed to require, has it pun- 
ished more severely. Doubtless, because in no 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 69 

manner other than that could England have held to- 
gether and increased her power. I feel almost in- 
clined to call the attention of parents to this method. 

In relation to betterment, there are those who 
believe there is only one ray of light, and it comes 
from the Salvation Army. If, in this society there 
is a sociologist who is fitted for laying the founda- 
tion for uplifting, God speed him, and the Salvation 
Army. I will aid him to the extent of my ability. 
But, as society is organized to-day, colonization 
of any class or classes, offers no remedy whatsoever. 
In this, there is nothing fundamental, or economic. 
Money obtained and expended for this purpose, 
practically speaking, would end in just so much 
waste, and help to intensify unrest and defer bet- 
terment. According to the press, Booth Tucker, 
and his friends, modestly ask the United States 
Government to advance for Western colonization 
schemes the sum of $50,000,000. Just think of it, 
for the very reverse of true economic methods, 
Booth Tucker has the deep-rooted assurance to ask 
our Government for this enormous sum of money. 
No man ignorant of the subject matter, as this 
gentleman shows himself to be, should dare to so 
presume. But then, we know merit rarely succeeds, 
that great remedial proffers, brass bands, and the 
promise of large profits, will draw money from the 
pockets of almost everybody. 

Again, the alarming feature is, the whole world 
has been and is making it possible for England 
to maintain her artificial commerce. Poor Russia, 
for instance, she, like British India, is in a death 
struggle, just because, in order to imitate England 
and maintain her army, she is starving her people 



70 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

to death, and is helping to keep Englishmen alive. 
Without even an attempt at the removal of the 
cause of war, Russia was deluded into the calling of 
The Hague Congress. What a hollow affair it has 
proven to be. But it serves as a good blind for 
centralists. 

Other countries have been so ignorant and 
greedy that they have allowed England to main- 
tain imperalism by letting her send the scum of 
European emigrants to crop and rob the virgin soil 
for two years, or three, if it is fertile enough to 
return pauper wages, and then move to another 
piece of new land and thus repeat the process, just 
to raise wheat to make into bread for the Britons. 
In this way the soil is robbed of nature's accumu- 
lations of ages, and fertilization of old lands made 
unprofitable and impossible, the prop being thus 
taken from all that has been done for centuries in 
the way of uplifting and preparing a foundation 
for something better to come. This is neither more 
nor less than sowing the germ of decay. 

Yet, at a meeting held in the United Charities 
Building, New York, under the auspices of the 
centralized or monopolistic charity organization, I 
heard this wholesale pauperizing scheme advanced 
and advocated by its beneficiaries, and approved by 
its members and patrons — by the most respectable 
reformers and philanthropists in America. 

During the last few years, the climatic condi- 
tions in America have favored larger grain crops 
than at any time within my remembrance. During 
the same period some of the most productive soil 
known has been put under the plow. These two 
circumstances have enlarged our yield of small 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 71 

grain. At a previous period, I found that for a 
series of years our wheat yield was about three 
bushels per acre in excess of that of Russia, and 
that of rye about four bushels, while it was about 
eighteen bushels or 60 per cent, under the yield of 
wheat in England. 

American farmers have delivered at their nearest 
railway station for shipment to England the total 
bushels of corn raised on an acre at a price equiva- 
lent to less than one-fifth of what it costs to proper- 
ly fertilize an acre there. Meat has been sold to 
England still lower relatively. These conditions 
obtain throughout the vegetable and animal king- 
doms of all countries under Christian rule. For the 
moment, where decay has not been absolute, ap- 
pearances are, as a natural sequence, nearer the nor- 
mal, but, as in fermentation, to return for a more 
prolonged period, because the germ is present 
awaiting the more suitable conditions. Without 
class distinction, add to these short supplies, tens, 
yea, hundreds of millions of tons of food unfit for 
human consumption, and therefore an enfeebling 
agent, and we have the analysis of social decay, 
which anoints our consciences to designate as un- 
rest. The above photographs not only universal 
physical degeneration, but it stands to reason that 
at the same time it photographs a corresponding 
mental, moral and spiritual degeneration as well. 
This has nothing to do with the, I-told-you-so's or 
pessimism. It is a mathematical fact. Yet, the hand 
on our signboard points, this road to intelligence, 
this road to justice, this road to morality, this road 
to virtue, this road to ethical culture, this road to 
Christianity. 



72 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

Let us now deal with mankind philosophically 
rather than under a system of paternalism and 
greed. Let us have done with that hateful thing, 
supremacy. Let us have done, now that there are 
no longer isolated peoples, with so-called patriotism. 
Let us deal with the advancement of man in his 
daily business and social life. In close relation 
hereto, you should never lose sight of the fact that, 
no section, no country, can be uplifted unless its 
products, be they of whatever nature, are traded 
in above their cost. On the other hand, trading in 
things below their cost entails final ruin not only 
upon the countries in which produced, but under 
commerce, upon all countries. The common thief 
will rank higher in Heaven than he or the people of 
his country who exist on things obtained below 
cost or for nothing. How this falseness ends will 
be shown by the following reference to nature's 
methods. 

This element of decay is cyclic. It gives little 
sign of its presence except at certain of its stages. 
What it is intended to convey, the process of fer- 
mentation illlustrates. For instance, certain stages 
of a large body of matter in fermentation, are, in 
appearance as quiet as the unperturbed sea, while, 
literally, at other stages it is as perturbed as that 
sea following a hurricane. It is noteworthy, how- 
ever, that the elements of ferment are ever present. 
But, note, if this vegetable life is not soundly dealt 
with constantly, the ideal in any event being im- 
possible of attainment, the ferment becomes vicious, 
changes in nature, and the product sought is trans- 
muted, when it becomes necessary to again start 
afresh. What applies to this vegetable life, also 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 73 

applies to human affairs as well. This is descrip- 
tive of the beginning and end of social affairs. The 
last matter shows the social condition of Christen- 
dom to-day — in this so-called Golden Age. 

Time shows no wickedness that can be cited to 
illustrate its depths. All things combined are of 
minor importance. It is the question of man's sal- 
vation. With the view of finding a remedy, it is 
worth repeating every hour of the day, by every- 
body. Every meeting, every school in the world, 
should be opened with this subject. For the ex- 
haustion of the soil, the destruction of productivity, 
the migration of people and their centralization, the 
complexity of government, mean neither more nor 
less than decay. 

Halt, and take a sounding in order to learn 
where you are. Don't fly off at a tangent until you 
know where you are going to land. Because there 
is no basis for uplifting until these things are 
settled. Halt, I say, if Christendom cannot improve 
upon these conditions, is or is it not a failure? Is 
or is it not an infinite tragedy? 

Commercialism, industrialism, and centralization, 
the causes of these conditions, have never been de- 
picted to me as forcibly as they have been by the 
pulpiteers whom in my youth I occasionally heard 
proclaim hellfire and damnation eternal. If these 
apply at all they apply to commercialism, centraliza- 
tion and the false social conditions for which they 
are responsible. 

In striking a balance there is little doubt but 
that the agricultural losses, on crops and land, in 
this country during the last score of years have 
exceeded those of Russia by several fold. It is 



74 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

quite possible that there will be over this matter no 
alarming awakening until all our rich virgin soil has 
been opened up and cropped for a few years and 
America has thus become Russianized. But the 
day is not far distant — these conditions every- 
where obtain. Then where can England find for 
leeching another corresponding field? For her 
own salvation, is it not high time that England 
soundly took up her bread question? Is it not 
high time for Christendom to take up the bread 
question ? 

Finally, regarding food and its production, I 
fairly beg of you to give this a part of the atten- 
tion it deserves. Note that, what I say in the fol- 
lowing two paragraphs everywhere obtains. But its 
atrociousness is only now beginning to be, 
through universal unrest, apparent. 

In face of these facts, before the conditions are 
righted, one should never open his mouth relating 
to the present educational system, to present in- 
telligence, to advocacy of supremacy, to decrease 
in birthrate and increase in feebleness, to labor 
unions, to their cause, monopoly and centralization, 
to the money question, to wonderful mechanical 
devices, to astronomy, and history or to kindred 
irrelevant matter, to prohibition, to past tortures, 
to religious intolerance, to reform, to charity, to 
libraries, to good government, to war, to ethics, to 
morality, to progress, to uplifting, etc., for they 
show nothing other than unsoundness or perversion. 

We are told that all these things are evo- 
lutionary. Is exhaustion of the soil a stage in evo- 
lution ? No ! Is a feeble body and brain a stage in 
evolution? No! Is death due to starvation a stage 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 75 

in evolution ? No ! Is death due to poisonous food 
a stage in evolution? No! Is British India, in the 
seventh hell, in a stage of evolution? No! Is 
Russia, in the sixth, in a stage of evolution? No! 
All Christendom, is in the same condition relatively. 
Is that evolutionary? No! In a word, is decay a 
stage of evolution? Everlastingly No! 

The greater part and intensity of this calami- 
tousness occurred during the last twenty-five years. 
What Russia needs to know, what the world ought! 
to know, is how, and by whom, this recent ruin was 
accomplished. I will answer. By false modern 
business methods, and more recently largely by 
America. 

Heretofore falseness was not so far reaching. 
It seldom extended beyond the boundaries of the 
country in which it was promulgated. Under steam 
and electricity, it unfortunately permeates every 
corner of the globe. They, steam and electricity, 
have brought into history an alarming epoch. One 
which cannot be dealt with in the heart of a library. 
One which cannot be solved by any individual 
country, the problem belongs now to all countries 
collectively. 

We can build only on truth, philosophy, science 
and experience. How or where shall we find them ? 
Mommsen said Gibbon lacked experience. On 
the other hand, Mommsen certainly lacked experi- 
ence, for there could be no more false and des- 
tructive theories than some he advanced the last 
years of his life. With an ideal knowledge of Ap- 
plied Biology, he certainly would have bitterly con- 
demned them, for as an honest man he could not 
have done otherwise. 



76 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

The Russians with whom I have been acquainted 
have been men of gentle culture and exceeding 
taste. They have been gentle-men. Their inate- 
ness, culture and development appeal most to me. 
Therefore, my prejudices are naturally in favor of 
the Russians. Having had no similar acquaintance 
with the Chinese, naturally I must draw my de- 
ductions from hard facts. Upon these premises, 
let us see whether it is desirable for Russia to enter 
and dominate China. 

According to my understanding, Confucius built 
on work and the fixation of habitation — for up- 
lifting, these are indispensable. In maintenance of 
soil, its productivity, excepting where opium was 
forced upon it, sustenance of and honesty among 
its great hordes of people for thousands of years, 
China has accomplished an achievement incompar- 
ably greater than man elsewhere or hitherto has 
approached. Moreover, from whence do we hear 
as sound reasoning? 

In a word, regarding these relations, Russia on the 
contrary, has gone down, down, down, until prac- 
tically speaking, she has British Indianized her own 
people. Should Russia become dominant in China, 
and throughout, apply Christendom's business 
methods, as she has done at home, in fewer than a 
score of years, she would have undermined and 
ruined China's work of thousands of years. Which 
would then be preferable, the entirety of China, or 
her exploitation by white men, by Christendom? 

I abhor war. Not so much for the suffering 
while being waged, as for the resulting moral de- 
pravity and decadence. If war is at all justifiable, 
for their entirety, China and Japan would be justi- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 77 

fied in an endless contest — I have always wondered 
why Russia was so opposed in her efforts for a 
desirable seaport, when so much cost and suffer- 
ing might possibly have been prevented. 

Under the Incas, as the Spanish who destroyed 
them tell us, there was neither prostitute nor thief. 
The Incas always had in storage two or three years' 
food supply, and nobody in Peru ever wanted for 
food. Which is the better of the two civilizations, 
that under the Incas, or that under Christian rule? 
Moreover, where to-day are there structures equal- 
ling in engineering skill those in Peru? 

Mr. Lincoln never pretended to be what he was 
not. He sometimes defined publicists, "as men with 
gifted tongue and shining eyes who left the con- 
sequences to God." ''In my experience," he said, 
"I have found that the consequences are up to 
me." 

Now, perhaps when in Christendom there is little 
else apparent, it is hardly fair to emphasize the false- 
ness of the methods and the dishonesty or ignor- 
ance of the dominators of its business — of its so- 
cial and political affairs. But, without the true 
and necessary information, has one the moral right 
to take unto himself the reins of government, of 
governments ? 

There is a deal said about a yellow peril. By 
itself, there is no yellow peril. There is a white 
peril, though. And if it creates a yellow peril it will 
shake the very foundation of the universe. Coming 
in contact with Christians, looks to be a sorry day 
for the yellow race. 

If China will debar Western methods, stranger 
things have happened than that the source of man's 



78 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

uplifting may be found in the Orient. Of these, is 
Occidental disastrousness. 

As commercialism is conscienceless, mere brute 
force, as retrogression is mathematically deducible, 
all honest discussion in this direction is deprived of 
opportunity. Even so, while the arena of combat 
is in this circle, in a phraseological contest with 
these celebrated publicists, from lack of experience, 
if nothing more, I should not stand a ghost of a 
show. 

However, if properly backed, in feeding, cloth- 
ing, housing and educating men, and starting them 
on the highway to betterment, I am ready and 
should be glad to enter into a contest. 



VII. 

WHILE the educational system should strike at 
the very root of biology, sociology, and 
thus become uplifting, modern education, on the 
contrary, is one of the indispensable factors in com- 
mercialism, but in this there is created in the public 
school rather a sentiment which causes the urban to 
think they must brutally bleed the rural classes, yet 
there is in it no business training worth a rap. 
Like the whole of modern society, it is all super- 
ficial, hollow and void of anything sound or benefi- 
cial to the individual or to the world. 

That this is not beneficial to mankind is clearly 
shown by the facts herein presented. Moreover, in 
universities the young man is taken away from his 
home or proper environment at the second most 
critical period of his life. He is removed from that 
which should intensify innate refinement of culture 
and all that makes life worth living to an atmos- 
phere which breeds audacity, brusqueness, destruc- 
tion, and the brutality that leads to the commer- 
cial wars which have been everywhere prevalent. 
One having throughout the world lived among and 
seen university students and graduates in the army 
and about town every hour in the twenty-four and 
in business understands this, and knows that these 
men, as a rule, are fitted in character for commer- 
cialism, but not in business training and experience. 
There is being bred just the class the founders of 
the American Republic hoped to prevent. 
79 



80 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

For gaining experience in biology, the university 
man loses the most receptive period of his life. By 
giving the so-called higher education to the few en- 
dowed with talent, could not China and Japan be 
advantageously imitated? As all of these things are 
directly related to Applied Biology, I cannot well 
pass by the educational question unnoticed. 

Being about to question the system, or results, or 
both, it should not be essential for me to say I have 
the highest regard for intelligence. For intelli- 
gence which will make men better and happier — 
namely, for putting in practice that upon which 
Spencer theorized. For without this there is an ab- 
sence of the right sort of intelligence. To reach 
this goal men must first be put on the highway to 
physical and moral betterment, for communities 
must be in an uplifting condition before education 
and Christianity can have full play. Wherever, and 
only wherever, these conditions obtained has there 
been found uplifting. These conditions rest solely 
upon the methods in force. Of books, had I my 
way, the number put before the masses would be 
limited to those of worth only. This statement is 
brought out by the fact that in their lifetime men, 
as a rule, do not devote to the fundamentals for up- 
lifting as much thought as I have spent each day of 
the past twenty years. Of experience, that should 
be infinite. 

Again, in Christendom, the number of schools, 
universities and churches during the last third of 
the nineteenth century has increased as never be- 
fore. But the number of people in hunger, feeble- 
ness, starvation and degradation has increased still 
more enormously; so also has the problem of sup- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 81 

plying food become more intense. These last state- 
ments are proved by the statistical decrease in the 
unit of food production and supply. 

This being true, the falseness of the whole educa- 
tional system is then an indisputable fact, otherwise, 
if educators understand these questions why have 
these conditions been allowed to obtain? 

Moreover, why has the ideal old-fashioned gen- 
tleman been effaced from Christendom? Why has 
there been a decadence of the lawmaking art in the 
United States Congress, a matter now creating no 
little comment? 

For good or for evil, for advancement or retro- 
gression, the world hangs on methods. Their 
origin, inauguration, promulgation and mainte- 
nance, depend upon the few, a mere handful. 

I have just said I would limit the number of 
books to those of worth. In partial explanation 
of this, Mommsen says of Gibbon: "His re- 
searches are not equal to his great views; he has 
read up more than historians should. A first-rate 
writer, he is not a plodder.'' By this, I take it, 
Mommsen meant that Gibbon was not a man of 
experience, not a thorough student of biology. 
Among my acquaintances, be they graduates of 
the higher or lower institutions of learning, not one 
of them is sufficiently versed in biology to read 
history, or anything pertaining to the conception 
and conduct of life, etc., intelligently. I have 
learned that among these some of the most suc- 
cessful in business did not know that land which 
is cropped needed fertilizing. In the hospitals, 
where so much of my time has been spent this year, 
among the young physicians, in relation to essen- 



82 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

tials, there was found the same status. As a mat- 
ter of fact the names of some of the peers among 
physiological chemists were unknown to, and the 
first requisites were ridiculed by some of them. 

They accept as facts the historians' statements, 
and even newspaper matter, the enormity of which 
should be patent even to the elementary classes. 
In my experience relating to the motive power of 
the world, the production and preparation of the 
food products of mankind, I find no models to work 
by, therefore, there appears to me, to be little, if 
any, sound and deep matter. In its application to 
that which should have most to do with uplifting 
mankind, and that, in Christendom, which has most 
to do with man's feebleness and inefficiency, is, I 
say, after forty years' experience, unsound and 
neglected. 

I can attribute this only to the absence of the 
knowledge of biology of life. Those only who in 
its broadest sense are acquainted with Applied 
Biology should write history, and text-books of in- 
struction, because otherwise biology will never be 
universally understood or applied, and because 
nothing is so harmful as to cram a man with false- 
ness. A quarter of a century ago, this was forcibly 
brought home to me at the library in the great 
British Museum, where upon my matters, I spent 
a month in absolutely worthless and vexatious re- 
search. 

If, in order to advance later, intelligently use 
suffrage, and become truly desirable citizens, boys 
and girls, men and women, graduate from our 
schools and universities without being able to learn 
in them the basal of that which is of most impor- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 83 

tance to mankind, as in the case, then as pertains 
to man's welfare, is our educational machinery 
otherwise than false and hurtful? 

If, until reproduction, the transformation is un- 
der natural laws, the albuminoids in grain will 
create the elements necessary for producing blood, 
for developing robust men and animals, and for 
maintenance of land. On the other hand, animals 
have been barely maintained when I fed these al- 
buminous properties from grain chemically treated. 
The appearance of plant life, above and below 
ground, is quite as marked under nitrogenous ele- 
ments, even though the analysis is identical. In 
the interference with nature's methods in the evo- 
lution from crop to crop, from infancy to old age, 
the injurious effects, if not as marked, are as real. 
Herein may be found an educational basis upon 
which the highest attainable civilization can be 
created. But it is absolutely neglected by all 
Christendom. 

When abnormal conditions are applied to trade in 
produce, the results are as marked and often more 
ruinous than in its production. For instance, ab- 
normal methods applied to the sugar production 
and trade ruined the producer. It also deprived 
him of the purchasing power necessary to restore 
the soil and purchase from the artisan his wares. 
In cotton false methods resulted, first in abnor- 
mally low, and, second, as at present, abnormally 
high prices. Were these facts as familiar to the 
manufacturers, great men, and rulers of England 
and Germany, as they should be, there would not 
now be such a chasing over the world to find suit- 
able soil and climatic conditions for raising cotton. 



84 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

Even though a degree of success is met with, 
natural laws will prevent them from holding the 
trade for any length of time. 

The paternalism practiced in the United States 
is not only a menace to the Republic, but to all 
countries, and unless there becomes uniformity of 
fiscal systems, or that fiscal systems are so re- 
stored, as to enable them to combat that of the 
United States, I do not see how it is possible for 
the world's husbandry and industrialism to escape 
ruin and chaos — and this at no distant day. 

In the abnormality of large cities, under a small 
unit of income, grossness approaching brutality 
largely obtains. Since my residence abroad in 
1872, of this condition, Berlin and London have 
been fair examples. On the other hand, in New 
York, with its large unit of income, all that accom- 
panies madness for money pervades society. The 
nearer cities are made to approach Elysium, the 
lower will, first, the urban, and next the rural dis- 
tricts fall. But, with a liberal unit of income, nor- 
mal farming and farming village communities be- 
come, as illustrated in America, self-uplifting. 
Hence, broadly speaking, under centralization a 
large unit of income is not, and under decentraliza- 
tion is uplifting. For instance, in confirmation, I 
learn from teachers of schools in New York that 
within one year of arrival, children of foreigners 
even at the early age of six, become less tractable 
and change for the worse. 

The following is a quotation taken from Spen- 
cer's "Education": "It is true that reading, writ- 
ing and arithmetic are taught with the intelligent 
appreciation of their uses." Page 28. But, "that 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 85 

which our school courses leave almost entirely out 
we thus find to be that which most nearly concerns 
the business of life." Page 39. This is as great a 
truth to-day as when it was written. 

I have to say that, that which, in the urban 
schools of America, supplements reading, writing 
and arithmetic, is either superficial, false or largely 
acts on civilization as a centralizing and retroac- 
tive force, class builder and social destroyer, and, 
like all mechanism tending to found an urban 
population upon the decay of husbandry, is an un- 
paralleled curse. 

For example, in New York City, neither teacher 
nor pupil knows how the world's occupations are 
made up, nor are they acquainted with the make- 
up of civilization. At the age of twelve, I have 
even observed it at an earlier age, boys and girls 
are now possessed of greater assurance and 
bravado than is desirable in any one. Rather than 
English scholars, they become parrots, being edu- 
cated out of normal work, consequently at an early 
age, as much as possible, they begin to live upon 
their wits, deserting that which constitutes proper 
home or social life. They have the pride of a pea- 
cock, and are as money mad as is a Rockefeller, 
price, the number of dollars, being the desideratum 
and sometimes the price is surprisingly low. The 
world is now being filled with these abnormal and 
undesirable people. 

Is there, moreover, a trustee, professor, teacher 
or pupil, who can give the cause of universal un- 
rest? If not, is there among them one who can 
give the remedy? Is there among them one who 
can apply biology or explain all the fundamental 



86 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

elements involved in ideal civilization? If so, can 
he combine and put them in practice? My answer 
to all of this, proven by current affairs, is in the 
negative. On the other hand, do not all these men 
aid and abet commercialism and centralization of 
the most alarming character? I answer in the af- 
firmative. If this be true, then is not the word 
EDUCATION in its present sense a misnomer? 
And are not the methods of teaching retroactive? 
Moreover, can man be taught in schools to think 
and reason soundly? There is no example to indi- 
cate it. 

The public schools and great universities where 
there are to be found the fabulous per capita ex- 
penditures are located in cities and trade centers. 
They are schools serving only for aiding and abet- 
ting commercialism and centralization. I have al- 
ready contended that there was never such a fatal 
class system inaugurated. To illustrate, distant 
from New York fewer than five hundred miles, 
among white people, there is not only an absence 
of educational opportunities, but in the same 
family there are children born of mother and son, 
father and daughter, and brother and sister. Com- 
mercialism has developed cannibalism in Peru, 
where under the Incas, there were about the best 
fed and purest people known. 

But, in that brief part which deals with me- 
chanics and distribution, or commercialism, I can- 
not agree with Spencer. Applied Biology leads 
directly opposite. Production is fundamental. I 
cannot bring myself to believe that in the midst of 
a pagoda of books, stationed in one spot or coun- 
try, one can learn sufficient of Applied Biology to 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 87 

put it in force. If the theory was reasonably 
sound, the almost insurmountable problem of 
bringing it into practice would need be solved. 
Aside from the world's imperfections, I say this, 
because, in formulating remedial measures, I have 
been unable to obtain from doctrinaires, and I may 
also say from scientists as well, any assistance 
whatsoever, basing my work solely upon the re- 
sults obtained from my own and others' experi- 
ence. 

I believe I have gone a long way in solving the 
problem of reaching the people, and enabling them 
to earn a living, and at the same time to under- 
stand and apply biology, which, broadly speaking, 
is the first thing for man to learn. It is the basis 
of Spencer's "Education." Its importance should 
be taught until everybody recognizes the vital fact, 
that without Applied Biology, there can be no up- 
lifting. 

This should be, but it is not generally recognized. 
It is not at all understood. In this relation, I have 
called upon or been in communication with re- 
formers, deacons, clergymen and bishops. They, 
with a single exception, have replied as did Bishop 
Potter, who said: "I agree with you thoroughly, 
but I haven't time to devote to the question" — 
haven't time to do good. Indeed, in the midst of 
poverty and in the absence of clean or proper en- 
vironment, there was not and never will be spirit- 
ual uplifting. Is it not then also more than possi- 
ble that pulpiteers have been and are without the 
proper educational training and environment? 
Strange and sad to relate, the only men I have met 
who have welcomed and did not stint discussion 



88 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

were men who had already gained a reputation in 
the scientific world. Is it possible that men prop- 
erly situated cannot be found who desire and who 
will help to elevate their fellow-man? My expe- 
rience makes it almost seem so. 

In the conception and conduct of life, there is 
all throughout, marvelous similarity. In educa- 
tion, paternalism results as fatally as do false 
methods when applied to husbandry and industrial- 
ism. Indeed, to me, vegetable and the higher and 
lower animal life seem to be interwoven. For in- 
stance, when artificial paternalism begins with 
nursing infants, and schooling at the age of three, 
the result is abnormal, as are false methods in cul- 
tivating, trading in, and the transportation of prod- 
uce, or in huddling people together in huge boxes, 
and supplying them with means for gratifying vi- 
ciousness, or as in teaching the unthinking, the un- 
truthful, phraseology or fluency of speech — the 
latter being, throughout the world, so noticeable 
among statesmen and business men. In fact, 
herein seems to be their only capital in life, hence 
the danger of this kind of training. 

I have spent all my years in the study of life — in 
Applied Biology. I was in touch for years with 
European husbandry, industrialism and finance be- 
fore I ever began to understand the customs of the 
people. How one can otherwise learn their habits 
and customs passes my understanding. Yet, for- 
eigners come here, remain a few days, and write 
up our affairs with a bravado that is appalling. 

We all know or should know that false teaching 
of any sort results harmfully. "Better be ignorant 
of a matter than half know it," wrote Publius 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. S9 

Syrus. I have in mind those who spend a few days 
in a strange country, and for the purpose of imi- 
tation elsewhere, write upon its affairs. On my 
last outward voyage there was on the ship a Miss 
Raven-hill. At the instance of the British Gov- 
ernment this lady came to America to remain a 
few days and report upon our educational system. 
The report soon appeared. The Englijh press gave 
it high praise. Now, while on the ship I attracted 
Miss RavenhiU's attention from her novels suffi- 
ciently long to learn that she was unfitted for the 
mission upon which she was sent. Rather than 
being beneficial, any attempt at fundamental teach- 
ing from this source would, to my mind, be harm- 
ful. Indeed, she is herself deficient in fundamen- 
tals. But at the time in question, Europe was mad 
over the United States. So, what otherwise could 
one expect? 

To-day, Alfred Mosely and a score of compan- 
ions are here to walk through our great universi- 
ties and report on our educational advantages. 
Some months ago Mr. Mosely came here rein- 
forced in the same manner to study our industrial 
methods and learn what gave us our so-called 
prosperity. As near as I can learn, on his first 
trip, Mr. Mosely called upon those personally in- 
terested in the centralization of manufacturing. 
To-day he is visiting the presidents and professors 
of the grammar schools and great universities of 
our country. As applied to sociology, is an expe- 
rience of this kind worth anything to Mr. Mosely, 
or to the world? Rather, for the purpose of use, . 
is it not harmful? 

While Chancellor, Bismarck desired to learn in 



90 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

what parts of the world there was prosperity, and 
the cause of it. He said he would rather have fat 
than lean customers. As he could not personally 
make the investigations desired he sent emissaries 
into not only the urban but rural world to find the 
prosperous spots and then to make a thorough 
study of them. These men, as I am personally in- 
formed, went among the people and learned what 
their outlays, incomes and profits were. They 
based their reports upon these conditions. So, at 
that time Christendom had at least one statesman 
who made an effort to know what made, and was 
interested in promoting, prosperity. Though 
crude, which one of -the three, Miss Ravenhill, 
Mr. Mosely, or Bismarck, pursued the most intelli- 
gent course? The deposition of Bismarck, as 
Chancellor, I regard in this light, as a great loss to 
the world. He did not seem to be wedded solely 
to great steamships, lightning railway trains and 
great cities. 

In relation to affairs of this nature, the Japanese 
have shown themselves to be incomparably wiser 
than Anglo-Saxons or Teutons. Before Japan 
began any new work, or entered upon new 
methods, she sent men of good minds to live among 
and study all peoples. In entering upon com- 
mercialism, they have, I believe, chosen most un- 
wisely. But in the way of learning, all of us will 
do well to follow their example, for nowhere in 
Christendom is there displayed so much intelli- 
gence and philosophy. Hence, they are bound 
eventually to lead in trade. 

He or she who attributes the era of American 
advancement to industrialism, trade schools, or to 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 91 

the modern educational methods, in our towns and 
cities, is uninformed regarding* our people. The 
reverse is true. Our progressive element sprung 
from the Yankee. The Yankee was the outcome 
of an uplifting environment. For example, the lit- 
tle village of New Britain, Conn., beginning with 
1810, has given the world 1,447 inventions. Half 
a century ago before there were overgrown and 
revolutionary universities, and when there were 
agricultural village communities, the manufac- 
tures of Connecticut were small, diversified, nu- 
merous and profitable. What obtained here, accord- 
ing to demands, largely obtained elsewhere. This 
was at a period when American civilization was 
nearer the ideal than that of any other known to 
Christendom. Of these conditions, foreigners, 
newcomers, and the rising generation, are incom- 
petent judges. England, where there was never 
idealism, and where pauperism is daily growing, is 
taken for comparison. This shows either ignorance 
or perversion. 

It is not my desire or intention to be offensively 
personal, but I speak thus plainly, because, since 
the world has become so closely united and the 
gaining of world power seems to be foremost, 
mankind appears to be drifting like a ship at sea 
without a rudder, thus showing the mind to be too 
limited in its scope, and man too perverse, for con- 
ducting the world on the basis of centralization, 
admitting for the moment that the principle is 
sound to begin with. But it is not sound. It is 
ruinous only. 

To resume, if man corresponds with his environ- 
ment, which, I believe, is unquestioned, then, else- 



92 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

where moral retrogression was never before so 
rapid as it has been in the United States during 
the past two decades, having been intensified under 
the McKinley administrations, until now the pres- 
ent administration seems to be lying awake nights 
to control trade on the Pacific, so manufacturing 
may the sooner enter and bring China into the 
commercial contest. 

If the modern school system disseminates desira- 
ble intelligence, why, under universal suffrage, did 
this country contribute so much toward our own 
and the world's decay and ruin? Why, I should 
like to know, 'has Christendom contributed so 
much for the crime of crimes — centralization? 

In this relation, I wish to say that the super- 
structure of modern Christendom is disintegrating. 
It is based upon falseness. It is rotten to the core. 
It is leaving undone that which it ought to do, and 
doing that which it ought not to do. At no dis- 
tant day, in the absence of transformation, appall- 
ing must be the results of the abnormal conditions 
and the absence of true intelligence. 

The systems of charities, of dealing with alco- 
holism, etc., would be amusing, were it not all so 
tragic. We all seem to be building or vainly trying 
to build from the cornice, or upon disintegrating 
foundations. 

How, the world wants and needs to know, could 
such alarming results have been accomplished? 
Through, suffice it to say here, false, wasteful and 
brutal methods. Who created these methods? 
The world's captains of industry. Who paid the 
direct losses sustained by our meat exports? The 
American captains of industry, now the Commu- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 93 

nity of Interest. Bosh ! How could it pay out such 
fabulous sums? Through rate discrimination, or 
from the treasuries of the railways dominated. 
How can the Community of Interest undermine 
and destroy European industries? By applying to 
industry and all things throughout the same 
methods that were applied to agriculture and hus- 
bandry, and upon which it itself builded. 

Yet, the German Emperor says, he would like 
more of these men in Germany. With his own 
adjutants and Anglo-Saxon assistants has he not 
had a number sufficient to have created an army of 
two or three million socialists? — 'the best organized 
body of men in the world. Has he not had a 
number sufficient to have degraded agriculture? 
Has he not had a number sufficient to have swollen 
and debauched the towns? 

Lord Rosebery would put in their hands 
the reins of government. Have not these men 
been doing more to feed England at the ruination 
of the world than if they had been in governmental 
harness? Have not, as compared with that of the 
P'rench, Englishmen succeeded in making English 
vice appear refined? Have not, as compared with 
American, though the fathers of it. Englishmen 
succeeded in making English corruption appear 
inconsiderable? Have not Englishmen for a long 
time succeeded in making the world believe that 
meat from cattle fed in England upon American 
oil cake and maize was of a quality superior to 
that of American cattle fed on the same food; and 
that English spirits produced from American maize 
is finer than American? Have not, without justi- 
fication, Englishmen pretty well succeeded in mak- 



94 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

ing themselves appear to be about the purest and 
wisest people on earth? Have not Englishmen 
succeeded in causing the world to imitate them in 
unparalleled crime — namely, in that of interna- 
tional commerce, and centralization? Have, in the 
pursuance of their methods, with the exception of 
the cooperators on the Exchanges and in the finan- 
cial world, Englishmen succeeded in making any 
people their friends? All things considered, would 
not a sound and wise fiscal system for Imperial 
England be the most judicious one to establish, es- 
pecially in the existing transformation of indus- 
trialism? 

The United States has taken to the imitation of 
Great Britain, and it has gone her in this incom- 
parable game "one better." Her fiscal system, 
through paternalism and falseness, is one of super- 
ficiality and ruin. She is now doing more to mi- 
grate the whole of civilization Westward than has 
ever been done before by any other administration 
or single government, though with opportunity 
the strenuousness in Germany might equal that in 
America. 

Let us put this thing in another way. In mov- 
ing toward and centering the field of battle on the 
Pacific, the three great Powers in question have in 
a single year done almost as much toward the ef- 
facement of modern civilization as was done in a 
century to efface from the map Mesopotamia, than 
where perhaps there was never such great produc- 
tivity. 

Where the methods were false, and unrest pre- 
vailed, and no remedy was offered, I have seen no 
good results come from writing and talking, or 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 95 

from teaching and preaching. The reason, of 
course, is because the basis of advancement rests 
on properly applied methods. I have seen nothing 
but the laying of the foundation of and retrogres- 
sion, therefore, were I not prepared with a remedy, 
I would not, if wise above all men, because of its 
irrationality and fruitlessness, raise even the tone 
of my voice in an appeal for betterment. 



VIII. 

BEING about to write of myself, would say that, 
these letters are to be circulated to a limited 
extent, not by any means solely for self-aggrandize- 
ment, but for the purpose of furthering Applied Bi- 
ology, which, whether to be initiated under my direc- 
tion, or that of another, in relation to the betterment 
of the present and coming generations, is of more 
importance than all other things put together. In- 
deed, it alone strikes at the root of all questions per- 
taining to man's welfare. The plain but modified 
statements, and also the kind of statements, that have 
been made, for instance, in reference to business, 
men, governments, and myself, relate to or properly 
bear upon the matter in hand. 

The following quotations have a direct bearing 
on, and intimate relation to my life and letters. 

In opening his speech at Springfield, 111., June 16, 
1858, Abraham Lincoln said : "If we could first 
know where we are and whither we are tending, 
we could better judge what to do and how to do 
it." 

"I have but one lamp by which my feet are guid- 
ed, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of 
no way of judging the future but by the past," said 
Patrick Henry. 

"But now mark, that even supposing an ade- 
quate stock of this truly valuable historical knowl- 
edge has been acquired, it is of comparatively little 
use without the key, and the key is to be found only 
in science. Without an acquaintance with the gen- 
96 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 97 

eral truths of biology and psychology, rational in- 
terpretation of social phenomena is impossible. 
Only in proportion as men obtain a certain rude, 
empirical knowledge of human nature, are they en- 
abled to understand even the simplest facts of social 
life; as, for instance, the relation between supply 
and demand. Hence, it necessarily follows that bi- 
ology and psychology are indispensable as interpre- 
ters of sociology; or to state the conclusions still 
more simply, all social phenomena are phenomena 
of life — are the most complex manifestations of life 
— are ultimately dependent on the laws of life — and 
can be understood only when the laws of life are 
understood. Thus, then, we see that for the regu- 
lation of this fourth division of human activities, we 
are, as before, dependent on science. Of the knowl- 
edge commonly imparted in educational courses, 
very little is of any service in guiding a man in his 
conduct as a citizen. Only a small part of the his- 
tory he reads is of practical value ; and of this small 
part he is not prepared to make proper use." 
Spencer's "Education," pp. 55-56. 

Being without schooling, although not because 
of lack of opportunity, all the capital of which I may 
be possessed is centered in experience, possibly, dis- 
cernment, being able to put two and two together, 
persistence, and long, long waiting. 

I was born in a town where, unknowingly, Ap- 
plied Biology was in force. At six years of age 
I became interested in the marvels of fermentation- 
bacteriology. Books were an aversion. But until 
reaching my majority, in a broad sense, I followed, 
through the working of my township, the funda- 
mentals of Applied Biology — sociology. 



98 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

I had learned something of the people in the 
Eastern part of America. At the instance of my 
mother, at my majority, I began traveling through 
the Western States for the purpose of gaining ex- 
perience, a matter she held of prime importance. 
Upon returning home, I became interested in dairy 
farming, growing and trading in hops. I soon gave 
this up and entered the field of industrialism and 
animal husbandry, thus broadening the field of Ap- 
plied Biology in which I had passed my boyhood, 
to, as will presently be shown, one almost world- 
wide. 

Within a couple of years, I increased the product 
from a given quantity of raw material, 50 per cent. 
This was of such large moment that I went to Wil- 
liam M. Tweed and within half an hour arranged 
for a sum which would be respectable even in these 
days. But it turned out that, in our products, we 
ran up against that refractory substance, sulphur. 

Upon discovering that some of the products of 
sulphur might interfere with the results sought 
after, a well-known chemist in one of the New York 
universities was consulted, whereupon investiga- 
tions were undertaken, which ended in an expendi- 
ture of ten thousand dollars. The investigations 
proved to be practically fruitless. 

In the meantime I induced a wealthy Scotchman 
of wide experience to come to New York from 
Cincinnati for the purpose of following one of the 
processes covering three days. At the beginning 
of the third day the apparatus in the laboratory of 
the university broke down. By working very 
cautiously the product was secured. We separated 
that evening much discouraged. However, so im- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 99 

portant did this hard-headed Scot deem the matter 
that he advanced some tens of thousands for a 
prospective interest. 

I put some of this product in one of the trunks 
I carried with me in my travels and examined it 
frequently. Some three or four years after the mis- 
hap in the laboratory, while discussing with a gentle- 
man at his residence near Kensington Museum, 
London, this experience and upon examining the 
sample, I discovered that I held in my hand the 
only pure product of the kind ever produced. Here 
is something I was in no way seeking. Something 
which may be said to in no way conduce to my 
credit — though it has been among the things which 
have stimulated me to continue in the race. Yet, 
thus have I made a discovery which may be made to 
enter into fundamental economic and social prob- 
lems in importance first and foremost. If ever I 
get an opportunity to develop my proposition, I 
shall, of course, not only give this matter due at- 
tention, but put it before the world. 

To return to the subject, the appearance of sul- 
furets caused an entire change in my plans. Having 
learned that, in this line of business, the highest 
authority was a resident of Berlin, I decided to 
visit this gentleman, provided my results could be 
successfully repeated and proven beyond any doubt. 

The test was made with most satisfactory re- 
sults. Thereupon I resolved to run over to Berlin 
for a few days, landing in Liverpool, Christmas, 
1871. The few days ended late in the autumn of 
1878. The Berliner referred to became a true friend. 
I conducted my experiments during these seven 
years at his factory. Besides the experience of this 



LcfC i 



100 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

gentleman, I had at my service two local chemists, 
and as consulting chemist, the celebrated Dr. Voel- 
ker, of London. The business of my friend was 
established in 1750, and widely known. Through 
this acquaintance I was enabled to familiarize my- 
self with German husbandry and industrialism, 
spending days at a time on farms and in factories 
throughout Germany. In the meantime there was 
being introduced the Corliss engine, the steam 
fire-engine, gun machinery, and many American in- 
ventions and products. Indeed, this was at the 
period of Germany's embryotic industrialism, and 
when the inefficiency of her workmen was so much 
discussed. 

While in Budapest, the proprietor of the Hunyadi 
Water drove me out to his springs and bottling 
establishment. Upon returning to my hotel this 
gentleman introduced me to one of his friends who 
was standing by the carriage as I alighted. This 
gentleman was exceedingly courteous. While 
taking me over the great roller flouring mills (the 
process, by the way, is Hungarian, not American, 
and it is unfortunate it ever came into use) I 
incidently gained information which cleared up 
many things in my mind and was and has since 
been invaluable, as relating to the things in question. 
What happened in Budapest, what happened in the 
laboratory in the university in New York, are illus- 
trative of events throughout my life. The most 
desirable information in these relations has come to 
me unsought. So, when I say that I hold experi- 
ence above all the books in the world written by men 
without it, you will not be surprised. I have entered 
into these details not alone because of the import- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 101 

ance of this matter, but because of the value I place 
upon experience. 

I was in contact with workmen of almost every 
nationality in Europe. At Berlin, I paid my men 
$4.25 per week, as against $15 in America. In this 
experience I learned that no well-fed people need 
fear competition where industrialism is carried on 
by poorly fed and enfeebled men. 

My leisure time was spent in London. I familiar- 
ized myself with almost every important company 
floated in Great Britain and on the Continent and 
also kept in touch with the current affairs of 
America. 

While being without any training in mechanics, 
by taking advantage of my experience, I found dur- 
ing my stay in London that in a large concern on 
the banks of the Thames, I could reduce the cost of 
a part of the system and running expenses 80 per 
cent., dispense with another more costly process, 
and increase the total product one-third. 

Up to this point, all told, outlays had exceeded 
half a million dollars. 

Yet, as a pioneer, if I may be so classed, this was 
the beginning of my troubles and tribulations. For 
instance, on my return from Europe I visited my 
native village. While there I met an old associate 
of my father and said to him that, as compared with 
theirs, I had obtained 50 per cent, better results. 
Singular to say, thereupon followed my first quarrel 
with any of the older men in my town. In the West- 
ern States there were gentlemen in the same line of 
business with whom I had become very friendly. 
Upon stating to them what I had done, there fol- 
lowed differences which I regret to say have never 



102 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

been healed. Yet, to-day no concern in the United 
States can conduct a living business without the 
improvements in question. This is illustrative of 
the things hereinafter to be mentioned with which 
I have been identified. 

At about this time I learned that those least ac- 
quainted with the things with which I was identi- 
fied, even after I was prepared to furnish indisput- 
able proof of their success, were the greatest ob- 
jectors and denunciators; that those subservient to 
the interests of others came next; that those with 
whom there was a direct interference, rather than 
adopting became quiet and underhanded oppressors. 

I have entered into these details because they are 
illustrative of the resulting hardships, and because 
they foreshadow what is now before me. If the 
above exemplifies only a minute part of the propo- 
sition I have to put forth, what is there not in store 
for me? 

Strange and lasting as it has been, through my 
early life there came from sources where encourage- 
ment should have been given constant and con- 
tinued disparagement. It was not until machine 
after machine, chemical results sought after, and 
the logical attempts at our works, all failed, that I 
learned as previously stated that I must, and could, 
think for myself. In other words, it is more than 
possible that I became a pioneer in practical Applied 
Biology through these first years of costly and re- 
peated failures and hard struggles. 

In 1879 I met an inventor who had patented 
machinery and developed a method for cold storage 
on bacteriological lines. This was the only true 
system I had or have yet seen. A company had 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 103 

been organized, but the patentee had failed in 
making a practical machine. Believing food should 
not be allowed to decay, and, as a preservative, in 
the endless value of cold, dry, circulating air, I ob- 
tained a controlling interest of the company. There- 
upon I secured the services of five draftsmen and 
three engineers of international experience. As a 
result I made a practical machine. It is now in 
operation on rates of storage three times higher 
than those paid for ice storage. 

Remember that true preservation of produce is 
next in importance to production and would be 
worth incomparably more to the world than all the 
mechanical devices or so-called improvements, and 
universities, on the earth. After successfully con- 
structingjhe refrigerating machine, I put it in oper- 
ation in a cold-storage warehouse. I brought to my 
warehouse men who needed dry, cold air. Among 
them were proprietors and managers of the largest 
and most important of all interests ; men who, more 
than any others, have been and are shaping the af- 
fairs of mankind. To what purpose ? None, what- 
ever. Not a man of them could I make understand 
the scientific and economic merits, notwithstanding 
they were surrounded with absolute and vital re- 
sults. 

This refrigerating machine and process was so 
conceived and constructed as to make minute 
crystals of ice for the purpose of absorbing the 
various taints and germs of decay in each of the 
things stored, the same being conveyed to them in 
an outer room where they were all deposited ready 
for final disposition. Thus the most perishable fruit 
could be preserved in its natural state for an al- 



104 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

most indefinite period. It is a biological principle 
which holds good throughout the realm of preser- 
vation and ventilation. The earth ought to be 
dotted with these machines, even at the instigation 
of governments. 

While visiting Cincinnati, O., in the rotunda of 
my hotel, was a singular looking water pump. It 
embodied durability, simplicity and a feature 
which, when in operation, charged the water with 
oxygen. After careful investigation, I said to my- 
self, to put on the market a cheap, durable pump, 
which would supply man and beast with pure water, 
would not only be a humane act, but it would be like 
"picking up money." So I purchased the patent 
and set a man to work on machinery for improv- 
ing the mechanism and reducing the cost of manu- 
facture. 

It is worthy of note, that, pure water is, in im- 
portance, second only to pure air. I had some of 
these pumps made so the action of the air on the 
water could be shown through glass. I sent sales- 
men out to exhibit these models in both large and 
small towns. In a word, even after purifying the 
water in well or cistern, there was not one man in a 
thousand who could be made to understand the 
value or means of obtaining pure water, nor did the 
durability of the pump receive any further consider- 
ation than that of pure water. The sales of pumps 
did not cover the daily expenses of the men em- 
ployed. In this experience, I learned, as few men 
have learned, the practical value of oxygen, and 
added to my knowledge the fact that, merit counts 
for but little. 

Not to put the pump in question, or one which 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 105 

will accomplish the same results, into all wells and 
cisterns ought to be made by all governments a 
misdemeanor. 

The principles involved in the refrigerating ma- 
chine and pump, if in common use, would serve in 
bettering man's condition as nothing is now doing. 

I would emphasize the fact that this last matter 
relating to my life is not irrelevant. It evidences 
evolutionary stages. It is indispensable. First, it 
all pertains to Applied Biology; second, I would 
also emphasize the fact that, my experience teaches 
me that fortunately in manufacturing no one man 
or no one country possesses the intelligence neces- 
sary for supremacy over the world. Anglo-Saxons, 
you should ever bear this in mind. 

All the talk in England, Germany and the United 
States of supreme intelligence regarding industrial- 
ism, I regard, to put it bluntly, as just so much rot. 
My own experience will not allow me to think other- 
wise, and this is why I have related some of it. 

Always, up to the present moment, I have been 
studying and trying to work out the problem of 
intensive and proper food production — a solution of 
distribution. A problem, by the way, once settled 
will have laid the foundation, the only foundation, 
for human advancement. 

In my native township none of us knew we 
were living under Applied Biology. I could neither 
account for, nor explain, what created and purified 
the blood (the desideratum in life) and gave us 
large and profitable crops, which made taxes un- 
burdensome. So I put myself in the way of receiv- 
ing monthly an index and synopsis of the world's 
experiments, and tried to follow them up sufficiently, 



106 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

as Lincoln said, "to know where I was and whither 
I was tending." 

As you will remember, it was in 1872 when my 
investigations extended into European countries. 
Since that time I have been in touch with European 
industrialism, and husbandry. This, with Ameri- 
can experience, has afforded me an opportunity to 
learn something of the so-called evolutionary move- 
ments of Christendom. For example, in 1894-5 
our Agricultural Department reports were full of 
praise relating to the advancement in a certain sec- 
tion of Europe ; and in another section, of its most 
celebrated dairy farm, at which the delegates of an 
International Agricultural Congress, convened at 
Paris, spent the day. 

For the purpose of satisfying myself relating 
hereto, I traveled some 10,000 miles, sailing from 
here in August, 1895. At the section in question, 
I found, to my utter astonishment, that the farm 
buildings and improvements corresponded with 
those I saw in Germany in 1872. But I learned that 
a gentleman, whom I had the pleasure of meeting, 
had, through common sense and crude biology done 
no little for the people there. Only yesterday, in 
writing upon Chamberlainism, our press, in discuss- 
ing this section in connection with free trade, 
showed an entire absence of knowledge relating 
thereto. 

I then went to France to see this noted dairy 
farm, which is located about twenty-five miles from 
Paris. Suffice it to say, that I have a picture giving 
a bird's-eye view of the buildings and yard on this 
farm. With this in hand, I can, within a few mo- 
ments, convince any intelligent man that there is 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 107 

nothing to warrant the praise it has received from 
our Agricultural Department, and from the agri- 
cultural press. 

Being in France, and having read so much about 
its stationary or decreasing population, it seemed 
to me to be an auspicious time to study its food 
supply. From what I saw, I do not hesitate to say 
that it is my sincere belief, that the mortality of 
the young in France can be reduced at least one- 
third. But that which I deem of greater impor- 
tance, is that a more robust people can be built up. 
This by no means applies to France alone, it applies 
to the world at large. 

On my way homeward I naturally passed 
through London. As the original, and greatest in- 
dividual agricultural experimenter, Sir John B. 
Lawes, resided only about sixty miles out of Lon- 
don, and I was somewhat familiar with his writings, 
I decided to avail myself of the opportunity of call- 
ing upon him. It is needless to say that my day was 
an instructive and enjoyable one. But, as I was 
not shown Sir John's stock, and its environment, I 
took a circuitous route to the station in order to 
get some information relating to Sir John's hus- 
bandry. To my surprise, and I am sorry, for the 
good of the world, to say it, rarely had I seen ani- 
mal husbandry mere unscientifically conducted, and 
rarely had I seen more filthy conditions. 

In this connection let me say that, I have how- 
ever seen more unscientific husbandry. This was at 
the most costly dairy in the world. It was to be a 
model. All told, it cost about $1,000,000. So un- 
scientific was it that about half the stock and all 
the fowls were tuberculous. I can corroborate these 



108 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

statements with a photograph I have of the place, 
and with a report of the number of cows slaughter- 
ed by the State authorities. 

The matter you have just been reading will be 
found not out of place. It leads me to the point 
in question, namely, under normal conditions, 95 to 
97 per cent, of mankind have been and should be 
living in farming and farming village communities. 
I have traveled here and there seeking to find scien- 
tifically conducted animal husbandry. I have not 
found it. Neither have I found a building for 
housing stock properly constructed; nor, broadly 
speaking, have I found a single condition as it should 
be — either for profitable employment, for building 
up robust people, or for educational advancement. 

I will put this in another way. One deemed by 
me most fitting. On the globe, nowhere is there 
to be found a spot, a farm, upon which Applied 
Biology is in force — in its true and fullest sense. 
Hence, due to its seeming preposterousness, the dis- 
credit the uninformed have and will cast upon much 
I have said or may say. 

Now, Applied Biology makes for the basis of 
physical, ethical and moral worth, self-teaching, 
self-uplifting. It makes, as well, for preventive 
measures in disease, feebleness, alcoholism, war. 
It alone makes for good government. 

It makes for culture — that indescribable some- 
thing, so far above and beyond anything in books. 
Above all as things go, it makes for the unit of 
money getting, as nothing else can. 

Can there be a more severe comment on mankind 
than this absence of intelligence relating to Applied 
Biology? Always and everlastingly no. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 109 

But now mark, the only highway to ideal civiliza- 
tion must be constructed on the lines of Applied 
Biology. Believing in the health, diffusion of 
wealth, and the happiness that may be made to 
result from applied science; and on the other hand, 
knowing of the exhausted soil, the starvation, the 
deaths, and enfeebled constitutions resulting from 
the products of unscientific animal husbandry 
(milk, for instance) — or none at all; of its neglect; 
of the attention paid to alcoholism, and so-called 
charity and reform societies, sets my blood fairly 
boiling with indignation. 

Having been interested in the indispensable prob- 
lems relating to man's welfare, it was natural that 
I should come in contact with all kinds and classes 
of men. This gave me entree to some of the largest 
concerns, even to the two which had and have most 
to do with shaping the world's modern affairs ; and 
to some of the renowned scientists. Therefore, on 
this side of biology, I have had something of an op- 
portunity to study life — men and things. 

From the scientists to whom I have submitted 
special lines of my work, such, for instance, as they 
would be fitted to pass upon, I have, as also from 
certain business men, unqualified endorsements. 

In the foregoing relating to my life, is dealt with 
the direct application of the Applied Biology that 
makes for the fundamentals in the highest attain- 
able civilization. (1) There will have been noticed 
in my experiences a direct line of evolution from the 
time I was 6 years of age. (2) Upon reflection, 
it will be seen that none of this was of my personal 
volition. (3) At the age of 6, one could not mark 
out such a map. I could not now do so, because 



110 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

there are a thousand and one things which it would 
be impossible to recall. Indeed, I was continually 
trying to get away from these lines, but, always, in 
spite of myself, to return to them. In place of a 
better word, let us call all of this, fate. (4) Those 
at all familiar with biology, or with Spencer's writ- 
ings, will recognize that, however great the an- 
tipathy, to write something of myself, in way of 
explanation, is a necessity, so pray pardon all I's. 

In this knowledge of biology, or, if you will, 
sociology, next in order, is, we will say, the rela- 
tion between supply and demand. The first step in 
this direction, is to know whether the natural law 
of supply and demand has been or is in force, or 
whether it has been made inoperative. The second 
is to get at the real production and see whether it is 
adequate for the needs of mankind. 

It so happened that I gambled in stocks, petro- 
leum, meat and grain (but not in cotton, coffee, iron, 
silver, etc.), and thus gained the experience which 
gave me an opportunity to learn the principles in- 
volved in this kind of so-called business, or, more 
correctly speaking, in this kind of gambling and 
fraud. 

This fact will bear repetition, for without similar 
experience and knowledge, to-day no man is com- 
petent to deal with economics, or with the world's 
fiscal systems. 

Up to 1888 I had never done any writing other 
than that required in business. But in June of that 
year I prepared carefully and gave to a young 
"Banker and Broker" (more correctly a tout on 
the Exchanges) a paper on the world's supply of 
wheat. I stated that wheat, then fluctuating around 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Reme'dy. Ill 

77 cents per bushel, would soon corner itself. On 
June 28th, the matter I prepared was put in circular 
form and mailed to men in every State in the Union. 

While my name was not used, it was known in 
some quarters that I wrote the circular in question. 
Let me prefix what I am about to say with the state- 
ment that, Wall Street, the captains of industry, 
Community of Interest, and the commercialists fight 
against agricultural prosperity. Now note, in every 
office I entered^ and by every banker and broker 
and gambler I met, I was made (not openly, for 
that would have been resented) the subject of ridi- 
cule — I felt it. Suffice it to say, September 30th, 
on the purchase of 500,000 bushels, the price of 
wheat advanced to $2 — the man who issued the 
circular gained a clientele which within five years 
made him rich. 

There are three features which I wish to bring 
out: (a) The value of statistical knowledge, its 
relation to the law of supply and demand, and as 
to whether it is or is not operative, (b) The ruin 
brought upon innocent speculators. (c) The 
brutality and ignorance displayed by commercialists, 
and by the people. This gives a little idea of the 
biological importance of statistical information. 

First, the concern whose office adjoined that of 
the young man who issued the circular lost for its 
customers $800,000. Second, "had your advice been 
followed," said its manager to me, "rather than 
ruin staring our house and its customers in the 
face, we would all now be rich." Third, with a 
million dollars in hand, England could have been 
brought to a disastrous and ruinous bread famine. 
Of the world's granary for the United Kingdom, 



112 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

advocated by Englishmen, among- them, of Lord 
Rosebery, especially, I have already spoken. 

In 1895, while in London, "UNIVERSAL UN- 
REST, The Cause And The REMEDY," were be- 
ing discussed through the press. I contributed 
two letters giving my views, and also a forecast of 
the dark future. What I wrote hit the methods 
under which England obtains her raw material and 
food, and the Mark Lane merchants who practiced 
them, so hard, that because of the threats of these 
merchants, the editor declined to publish anything 
further from my pen. I am not surprised at this. 
The merchants who were allowed to and do practice 
these methods should have been and should be 
ashamed of their country and of themselves. I also 
said that the final results of our own false business 
methods would prove to be just what time has 
proven them to be, disastrous. In this experience 
I found that, in Mark Lane, as elsewhere, for the 
good of the world there were too many W. J. 
Harris. 

In 1896, Mr. Mark Hanna was Chairman of the 
National Republican Committee. That is, he con- 
ducted Mr. McKinley's Presidential campaign. The 
basis of the literature which he distributed was on 
the lines of over food production. It was during 
that year, that Hanna said: "We cannot do any- 
thing with the farmers, they have left us. But we 
can get the labor vote." After the election of Mr. 
McKinley, Mr. Hanna started out to make of the 
capitalists and artisans a solidarity, as against the 
rural population. 

This so irritated me that, on January 9, 1897, I 
mailed to Hanna a letter (and to Mr. McKinley a 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 113 

duplicate) in which I said, "In so far as is known 
up to this time, there was never so little food pro- 
duced per capita in the world, and never so many 
people in and dying from starvation. A more un- 
sound and harmful proposition it would be impos- 
sible to offer. To make of capitalists and artisans 
a solidarity, would be to hold over the world a 
weapon of destruction, putting into the shade all 
other monopolies, and at the same time the power of 
all rulers." 

In his reply, Mr. Hanna said he would meet me 
when he came to New York. I did not call upon 
him here, because I felt then that his methods were, 
and feel now that they are, ruinous. There has 
been no period in history, when, according to my 
data, civilization has received such destructive and 
disintegrating blows as it has since 1896, since the 
United States has been under the dictatorship of 
Mark Hanna. 

In this connection, it seems fitting that I should 
relate an incident that occurred while I was abroad. 
During a discussion of the economic questions with 
a Kentish gentleman in an hotel in London, I re- 
marked that it was my impression there would soon 
be assassinations or an assassination resulting from 
our false methods. A few hours later, upon coming 
down from my room, I met this gentleman again. 
"How strange," he began, "have you heard the 
news? President McKinley has been assassinated. 
What a marvelous coincidence," he added. This 
conversation and the assassination of Mr. McKinley 
must have occurred at or about the same time. 

But, in metamorphism, centering commercialism 
on the Pacific's borders, consequently disturbing 



114 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

habitation and races and undermining past and 
present upbuilding, President Roosevelt has sur- 
passed all official personages in this country if not 
in the world. In other words, in destroying rather 
than logically and wisely building upon the past, 
and in beginning anew, President Roosevelt is es- 
pecially notable, for it is all revolutionary. Peace 
and normal men, are not, Mr. President, the result 
of commercial and urban development, big armies 
and navies and great wars. 

Everybody is acquainted with the fact that, in 
1897 and 1898, Joe Leiter was a factor in the 
world's wheat market. In this relation there were 
some of the most important and alarming conditions 
shown in modern business affairs. From 1896 to 
April, 1898, wheat prices in Chicago gradually ad- 
vanced from 49 cents to $1.23 per bushel. In the 
middle of March, those who sold Leiter the wheat 
they did not possess, to be delivered on the 30th of 
May, became frightened, and by their own pur- 
chases, put the price up on themselves to $1.85 per 
bushel. 

Along in March, I wrote Mr. Leiter that he was 
benefiting the farmers greatly by helping to put the 
price of wheat on a profitable basis. I also said, if 
you will turn your May purchases of wheat into 
July you will have the United Kingdom and Ger- 
many at your mercy. 

Now, let us look into my statistical hypothesis, 
and go to the very bottom of this matter. After a 
good deal of tedious work I found that about 44,- 
000,000 bushels more wheat came into the world's 
market than there would have done without this 
stimulus of the very high prices in March. In Sep- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 115 

tember, 1898, the world's visible supply of wheat 
(in Europe, in America and in transit) all told was, 
strange to say, about 44,000,000 bushels, or prac- 
tically the same quantity that was represented in the 
extra shipments. For example, the visible supply 
in the United States was 5,900,000 against 45,500,- 
000 bushels on September 1, 1896, two years earlier. 
This shows how clean the farmers had swept their 
bins. 

Had the wheat markets of the world been left en- 
tirely to themselves, or had Leiter's purchases been 
made for July rather than May delivery, the stimu- 
lus for high prices would have been too late to have 
brought out this excess of farm shipments in time 
to have gotten the wheat to market prior to late in 
the summer or early in autumn, for the distances 
would have made the delivery a human impossibility. 

Hence, the people and business of all great cen- 
tralized and manufacturing districts would have 
been reduced to a state of starvation and chaos. 
England would have been without bread for some 
weeks. They might have been bankrupted and 
ruined. As it was, England escaped through luck, 
nothing more or less. Had England's fiscal can- 
nibalism so humiliated her, possibly the world would 
now be on the highway to betterment. 

On January 16, 1901, Lord Rosebery made a 
speech in the Chamber of Commerce at Wolver- 
hampton, on the reasons for America's invasion of 
the export field. This speech received attention 
from the commercial press of all Christendom. 
Yet, Rosebery's suggestion was that the men who 
are dominating and ruining the world be made the 
heads of government. 



116 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

Believing that Lord Rosebery would do anything 
and everything in his power to better the condition 
of the people, on November 16, 1900, I expressed 
to his Lordship, prepaid, a long letter on the true 
economic situation at that time. In that letter I ex- 
plained the condition of the business world in 
America, and gave a forecast of the true relations 
of what is happening to-day, and, as I believe, of 
much darker days to come. While I see in the 
Wolverhampton speech earmarks of my communica- 
tion, I regret that his Lordship did not avail him- 
self of the matter therein contained, because, coming 
from a man standing so high in the world's esti- 
mate, it might have served a good purpose. 

In August, 1901, while in London, for the pur- 
pose of reading, I handed a duplicate of my letter 
to Rosebery to the Parsee merchant, and M. P., 
Dadobhai Naorogi, of Anerley Park. In returning 
the same, among other things, this gentleman 
wrote: "I am thankful to you for allowing me to 
read your paper. I have now a clearer idea of the 
economic condition of America than I had before; 
but the case of India is far worse than you appear 
to be aware of." Could and should not Rosebery 
have made better use of such a letter, whether or 
not to my credit ? 

As M. de Bloch was accredited with bringing 
about The Hague Congress, of November 16, 1900, 
I also expressed to him, at Warsaw, Russia, a long, 
courteous letter. Permit me to reduce the substance 
of that letter to a few blunt sentences. Almost 
anybody could take the earning power of a warlike 
people, and the cost of maintenance of such an army 
and navy as that, for instance, of Russia, and show 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 117 

that the result would eventually be ruin ; and that so 
long as present methods were in force and com- 
mercial supremacy of certain countries was the chief 
end in view, the frequency of wars would be accel- 
erated. Because of his great influence with the 
Czar, I begged M. de Bloch to present to his 
majesty some sort of a scheme whereby the people 
of Russia could be uplifted and advanced. Under 
present industrialism, the irrationality of The Hague 
Congress has been proven by the increasing central- 
ization, by the number of wars since it convened, by 
the world's increased army and navy expenditures, 
and unrestful condition of the rural and urban 
classes, due to the abnormality of modern commer- 
cialism. 

Around this time the name of Mr. Rider Hag- 
gard was frequently in the papers. From the mat- 
ter it seemed that he was deeply interested in up- 
lifting. So, in relation to social affairs, I wrote him 
a long letter about entering into their fundamental 
principles. To my astonishment, he replied that he 
had not the time to do so. Almost invariably the 
world guesses wrong. In importance the social 
problem is, I repeat, above all others combined. 
Without a sound basis, the attainment of which re- 
quires a lifetime, has one a moral right to put forth, 
and induce the people to enter upon, any scheme of 
large moment? Among all these things, do you 
wonder that in the midst of all this idle talk, I 
wonder whether there is any real earnest desire and 
real hard work ready for advancement? 

No, it is irrational, without a proper unit of in- 
come, to even discuss human betterment. Upon this 
depends the proper feeding, clothing and housing 



118 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

of people. The pens in which our swine were 
kept were in better condition than were many of 
the houses I have seen in the rural districts of the 
United Kingdom and in those on the Continent of 
Europe. When people are underfed they will be 
found without proper environment. 

It may yet appear that there was no William M. 
Babbott, and that these things are all myths. Suffice 
it to say, there was and is such a personage and that 
under his eye at the present moment there are evi- 
dences of these and other similar circumstances. 

The world seems to be all at sea over the defini- 
tion of wealth, and that which makes for good 
government, prosperity and advancement. The 
commercial world tells us that progress is the re- 
sultant of gold dollars, pounds, or marks, and uni- 
versity education. In face of all we hear and read 
nowadays it seems almost idle to discuss betterment 
at all. But, as the world is full of common people 
like myself, let us come down to something we 
can all readily understand. Of uplifting, permit 
me, for instance, to illustrate some of my personal 
studies relating to the value and importance of the 
unit of income, because hereupon rests progress or 
retrogression, depending upon the amount and 
where derived. 

When, in farming and farming village commu- 
nities, things are traded in above their cost these 
communities are in a state of self-uplifting, and on 
the only highway to idealism. On the other hand, 
when things are traded in below their cost, there are 
poverty, degradation and retrogression, and with- 
out any means of help whatsoever. This is some- 
thing we can all grasp. You may call it wealth or 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 119 

what you will. It is a vital fact. It will remain 
indisputable until the crack of doom. 

To illustrate, first, possibly there was never a 
bolder lot of desperadoes than was to be found fol- 
lowing the commerce of the Ohio, Mississippi and 
Missouri rivers. A body of these men settled in 
a productive section bordering the Missouri and 
entered into farming. They sold their produce 
above the cost of production. They improved their 
farms, barns, houses and grounds. Villages came 
into existence. Good schoolhouses and churches 
were built. Within fifteen years, to all outward ap- 
pearances, these men were transformed into as de- 
sirable citizens as were to be anywhere found. Their 
vested rights, of which we hear so much, had in- 
creased enormously. 

Second, five thousand miles distant, during the 
same period, I found, in a sense, a more striking 
metamorphism in a body of 700 peasants, so realis- 
tically portrayed, in "The Man With the Hoe," in 
the painting by Millet. A nobleman, a gentleman, 
gave these men an opportunity to purchase and 
work out their own salvation on 1,000 acres of his 
estate. A business man mapped out their course. 

These people sold their produce above its cost. 
At the end of fifteen years I found a settlement of 
1,500 in a condition superior to that of any body of 
corresponding numbers I had met with in Europe. 
On the day of my arrival the village electric-light 
plant was set in motion. It was paid for, not in 
bonds, but with net earnings. Taxes were not 
burdensome. Government was simple and manage- 
able^ — not as in centralization, complex, unmanage- 
able and degrading. There was no money question 



120 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

to settle, for there were no Stock or Produce Ex- 
changes and gambling. These men were no longer 
of the brute type. They were live, uplifting, human 
beings. They called their village, "Young 
\merica." I wish Americans, who are among the 
least scientific and about as wasteful agriculturists 
as there are in the world, farmed their lands as 
well, and that they were as prosperous as I found 
these former peasants, but now progressive men. 

By selling the products of their labor and land 
above cost, these men built houses, stores, 
schoolhouses, churches, entertainment halls, 
covered the floors with tile, maintained good roads, 
dressed respectably, fed and conducted themselves 
properly. 

In each of these sections separated by 5,000 miles 
of land and sea the fundamental basis was biology, 
in an embryotic state. 

Regarding the definition of wealth, what does the 
world care for the fine-spun, inexplainable theories 
of a book-worm, be he a professor, publicist or 
what not? Give us profitable productivity. That 
will engender normal conditions, self-uplifting, and 
result in the fixation and education of man, conse- 
quently in the only idealism. 

Third, per contra, intermediary, the inhabitants 
of the once most ideal section known to me were 
unable to realize from the sale of their products the 
amount it cost to produce them. Within the fifteen 
years in question, suffice it to say, that, not only 
was there a disappearance of idealism, but the phys- 
ical and moral degeneracy was as marked there, 
as was advancement in the Missouri River section re- 
ferred to There was, of course, no such transfor- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 121 

mation as was shown among the peasants. That 
would be unreasonable to expect, in so short a 
time, for they were transformed from animals into 
desirable citizens. In this section there had been 
a shrinkage of 66 per cent, in land values. 

Adjoining our village, a desirably located and 
once profitable dairy and hop farm, in which I was 
interested, has, I am informed, since changed 
hands for 20 per cent, of the sum at which I dis- 
posed of it. As there are tens of thousands of 
abandoned farms, this enormous shrinkage is not 
an exceptional instance. It is safe to say that 
since 1880-5 the agriculturists in the Eastern 
States of America have suffered more severely 
than have those in the United Kingdom, or in any 
part of Western Europe. 

Mine was a typical high-class Yankee village, 
largely made up of an American middle class 
elsewhere unknown. The 'homes were our kinder- 
gartens. They were our teachers, our preventives, 
but in time of need our hospitals, with ever- 
present and untiring nurses. They were our sew- 
ing schools, dancing schools and ethical schools; 
race suicide and eugenics were not entered into — 
because it was not necessary to do so. It was a 
normal village, with proper and normal homes, 
with untiring and incessant effort to make the ma- 
terial conditions so rational that 'the resultant could 
but be uplifting, physically and morally. 

Let me say to the writers, speakers, preachers 
and indeed to all of those so active in this direc- 
tion, that, without the fundamentals underlying the 
village and society of which I have just spoken, it 
is as impossible for you to create advancement as 



122 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

it would be for you to restore that decayed spot in 
a decaying potato. 

As the drink problem in our village was prac- 
tically in a rational condition, because the trade 
was respectable, and society was normal, I will say 
that, if by chance, a man became intoxicated, the 
innkeeper saw that he was put to bed. In the case 
of the appearance of a lewd woman, I have heard 
an innkeeper notify her to leave town, and she went. 
Relatively these little innkeepers and their families 
held just as high a social position as do Lord 
Iveagh and Mr. Bass, of Burton-on-Trent — where, 
by the way, I spent a week testing the effect upon 
ales of hops grown in different countries, and in 
looking up the source of the water supply. So you 
see that in my pursuit of biology, a large part of 
the matter I hear or that comes before me, relat- 
ing to the alcoholic problem, is so trifling, com- 
pared with the overwhelming economic problem 
which lies at the root of all those things, that I re- 
gard it and the attention paid to it as little short 
of cruelty. 

In place of this there has been born a Public 
House Trust. Like the whole monopolistic system 
of usurpation in business, education, charity, relig- 
ion and government itself, it is void of funda- 
mental economic principles, supplants the old men 
and occupants, and naturally puts in employment 
men and women ignorant of liquor and food, and 
of the drink and social problems. 

What made my native village normal? What 
made the conditions of which I am writing? I 
will tell you. It had, in a somewhat high degree, 
for its basis, Applied Biology. This village has be- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 123 

come abnormal. It is fast becoming like the re- 
mainder of the world. How is that? Applied 
Biology no longer exists there. 

Could not one see a clear way out of present 
affairs, the irrationality of all these movements 
would tend to lessen faith in humanity. Yet, that 
there is a road to betterment and that it is not 
made available might seem almost more alarming. 

Extremes in wealth and poverty have displayed 
to us the brute force in man, and doubtless will 
continue to do so to the end of time. Proper ma- 
terial welfare has developed the better side of man. 
In a manner I cannot explain, it seems impossible 
to avoid carrying this question of material asso- 
ciation a little further, and in a direction which 
should not, but may be unpopular (but then, of 
course, the letters I am writing will be unpopular 
w r ith the majority anyway). In so far as my expe- 
rience extends, which has been among people of all 
classes and in all conditions, and in as far as I can 
learn, there has been no moral status or uplifting 
in the world in the absence of reasonable material 
surroundings. It is said that the nearest approach 
to Utopia was under the government of the Incas. 
Under their wise administration, crime, public cor- 
ruption and theft were unknown. The basis — the 
beginning and the end — of these glorious results 
were ideal material conditions. 

All through my life, and everywhere I've been, I 
have heard the complaint that the church, Protes- 
tant and Catholic, neglected to ameliorate or im- 
prove the material conditions of its communicants 
and of the people generally. I assure you that to- 
day, the word honesty is ridiculed by a great ma- 



124 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

jority of men, women and children. This trans- 
formation during the past three decades I attribute 
largely to the fact that their reading, is composed 
of little else than business corruption ; brutality and 
crime furnishes and forms the topic of conversa- 
tion. The whole bent is, how can the almighty 
dollar be obtained? Believing as I do that the 
unrest evidences the deterioration of morals, and 
decreasing respect for the church, I hope I may be 
permitted in my littleness to suggest that it com- 
bines with the spiritual proper material teachings. 
To do this, the teaching of life, of biology, would 
of necessity require to be carried into theological 
training. 

While the church proclaims to be non-material- 
istic, it takes a most active part in all great eco- 
nomic, social and material problems. I contend, as 
already stated, that nobody has a moral right to 
take active part in any great social question who is 
not familiar with the conception and conduct of 
life, for the reverse of good almost invariably re- 
sults. For example, in London, where, excepting 
in one instance, public betting has been forbidden, 
almost everybody lays money on the races and 
does the silliest kind of betting. Every day men 
call upon waiters, waitresses, barmaids, chamber- 
maids, etc., with books for betting six pence and 
upward. In London no house of ill-fame can 
exist, yet, vice is apparent in every nook and corner 
of the city. Excepting among cattle on ranches, 
never have I seen such bestiality as I saw displayed 
by men and women on the Thames embankment 
under the shadows of Westminster Abbey and the 
Parliament buildings at twilight in August, 1901. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 125 

This all evidences nothing but falseness of every 
kind. Similar methods have resulted in dis- 
tributing vice throughout the flat and apartment 
houses of New York. In relation hereto, not a 
single move is made to prevent what cannot be 
cured. 

At about the same time, an English prelate said 
to me that the Indian ryot, whose wage is a penny 
a day, is well enough off, and that he is contented. 
And the prelate evidenced that he also was satisfied 
with the conditions. Could there be anything 
more deplorable and intolerable than such a posi- 
tion? Without enlightenm'ent, tolerance, gentle- 
ness and something for us here on earth in the way 
of proper material conditions, is there anything in 
Christianity? 

Let me suggest to churchmen and pulpiteers that 
they try and see if they cannot better our material 
condition here on earth through good health and 
environment. Nobody can thus be harmed, here 
or hereafter. After all that has passed, and the 
little that has been accomplished, is it not worth 
the trial? 

When one loses faith in the efforts and state- 
ments of another one begins to avoid his presence, 
when, naturally, his influence becomes retroactive. 
So I say, take up in the pulpits the fundamentals 
and deal with them soundly and truthfully. It is 
time to prevent people from being able to say, as 
did Thoreau, that "men are not good enough for 
the earth." 

For instance, at a temperance meeting held in 
New York, great divines said to us that two thou- 
sand years ago wine was unfermented, and so 



126 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

drunk at The Lord's Supper. At that period, as I 
understand it, grape juice was not known as, and 
is not, wine. But I cannot learn that there was 
any apparatus or bottle which would have enabled 
the manufacture and storage of grape juice in its 
normal state. So you see we cannot even give cre- 
dence to these statements, whether the proposition 
be or be not relative. 

At the same meeting one of America's most 
popular and renowned Ambassadors said that 
there was more money expended in New York 
City on drink than for food. As a matter of fact, the 
value of the grain which enters into the bread sup- 
ply alone of this city is more than double the value 
of the grain required for all the alcoholic spirits 
manufactured in the entire country, a considerable 
percentage of which is used for other purposes than 
that of drinking. The difference between the cost 
of the flour to the baker and the price paid for the 
bread by the artisan is more than double that of 
the difference between the cost of the raw material 
that enters into alcoholic and fermented bever- 
ages and the price paid for them over the bar — 
there is, in certain instances, the revenue tax. So 
you see this sets us watching the man we have been 
taught to look upon as clever and we finally dis- 
trust him personally as well as his cause, the result 
being to society a double injury. 

Within a radius of twelve miles from City Hall, 
New York, the deaths under one year of age were, 
when I collected the data, 47 per cent., and under 
two years of age, 62 per cent.; and under five years, 
77 per cent, of the whole number of deaths over 
five years of age. In one week the total mortality 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 127 

was 1,038. Of this number 713 were under five 
years of age; 529 under one year; and only 325 
over five years of age. The deaths due to alcohol- 
ism were only a fraction of one per cent. The 
large mortality in New York, which is not excep- 
tional, was largely due to impure food. In all its 
phases, this entailed upon humanity incomparably 
more deplorable results than did alcoholism upon 
the whole country. 

Throughout Europe the conditions are as or 
more appalling than are those just mentioned. Of 
every 1,000 births there are many sections where 
the mortality the first year ranges between 500 and 
750. The conditions relating to the food supply 
throughout the world present a degree of similarity, 
excepting that each country has some striking im- 
proper alarming defect. For instance, some of the 
things done in Scotland seem incomprehensible. 
England presents just as striking defects, in other 
forms. After visiting the Aylesbury, and Welford 
& Sons dairies, London, and having been driven 
out to some of their sources of supplies, I asked 
the respective managers of these companies if it 
were possible for them to direct me to some dairy 
where there could be found reasonably desirable 
conditions. ' In both instances, Sir John B. Lawes* 
farm, of which mention is made, was cited. What 
has been said of Scotland and England may be 
said of each and every one of the continental coun- 
tries. In Germany the Emperor and Empress lend 
their names to the purveyors of foods which it 
seems to me they should not without knowing 
something about them. I am cognizant of an in- 
stance in Germany where due to improper food 85 



128 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

per cent, died against only 15 per cent, under 
proper feeding. 

Let us strike the mean in an illustration of these 
conditions. 'Suppose, for instance, 1,000 insuffi- 
ciently nourished, badly housed, scantily clothed 
women go through all the suffering of bringing 
into the world 1,000 children, and then undertake 
the almost overwhelming problem of properly 
rearing them, to find at the end of five years 500 
of them have passed through days, weeks or 
months of illness, to finally be laid in the grave, 
and that among the 500 living, there are not five 
normal human beings, and also that, of this suf- 
fering, cost, and misery, the larger part might be 
avoided. Was there ever, could there be any- 
thing more abnormal, brainless and heartless? 

Why, "One person in every 150 in Chicago is in- 
sane. One person in every five is predisposed to 
insanity." This is inserted in the report of Dr. 
V. H. Podstata, superintendent of the big Dunning 
Insane Asylum. 

"At the present rate of the development of in- 
sanity, according to the world's statistics," says 
Dr. James P. Lynch, "and with present conditions 
of work and living unaltered, half of the civilized 
world will be more or less insane 500 years from 
now. And in another 200 years from that time, 
under the same conditions, most of the Caucasian 
race will be mentally deranged and civilization 
wiped off the face of the earth." 

Regarding feebleness, mortality and insanity 
you have not been told that in Christendom, the 
rich more than the poor, consume the filthiest, most 
disgusting, enfeebling, death-dealing food ever 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 129 

eaten by man, and that the relative annual value of 
this product is thirty times greater than that of 
the world's iron output. 

As the use of machinery, centralization, com- 
forts and luxuries for the few, have increased, so 
has this field of mortality, insanity, suffering and 
starvation increased and widened. A chart repre- 
senting the steady increase in the world's output of 
iron during the last half century will show how 
steadily these things have been developing, but 
not to their full extent by any means. 

In summing these things up it shows that the en- 
tire force is improperly directed, that myths are 
being chased up, and that the betterment of man- 
kind on earth is being entirely neglected. In an 
aside, I would like to ask how anything is going to 
be done for man hereafter if nothing is done for 
him here on earth. 

When these fields are widening and the num- 
bers are increasing is it just to boast of intelli- 
gence, probity, Christianity, and call those back of 
incomparable achievements and renowned for hon- 
esty, heathens, barbarians? Is the Occidental cry 
for supremacy other than brutism and an incentive 
to war? Indeed, in face of all these things, are we 
not showing ourselves to be a lot of braggarts and 
superficial hypocrites? When General Sherman 
said, "War is hell," he evidently did not know of 
these things, and that war is a mere speck in the 
abnormality of imperialism and centralization. 

Of all these things, how are you going to ex- 
plain them? Will you attribute them to ignorance, 
to greed, to brutality, to cruelty, or to all these 
things combined? In this so-called Golden Age, I 
would like your explanation. 



130 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

As already intimated, I am prepared to carry to 
their relative logical conclusion the properties con- 
tained in vegetable matter. If generally in prac- 
tice, this would reduce this appalling child mor- 
tality by one-half, or even more; correspondingly 
prevent disease; develop stronger and more robust 
men; fix habitation; simplify and make ideal gov- 
ernment possible. As a matter of fact, this strikes 
at the root of everything uplifting. I turn to this 
daily for my information and inspiration. How 
many can initiate what I have in mind it is impos- 
sible for me to say. But certain it is that the propo- 
sition never has been in force, or even exemplified. 

By whom were all these incredible things brought 
about? (1) By imperialists, commercialists, cen- 
tralists, monopolists and their touts 1 — by the so- 
called Bankers and Brokers. (2) By, as a whole, 
the urban population, including, of course, ar- 
tisans. (3) By the educational system at the 
urban centers and great universities. (4) By the 
extolling by clergymen of modern commercial 
methods and the monopolistic idea of the su- 
premacy of one man over others or one country 
over others. 

These are dreadful, and, if not true, wicked 
things you keep on saying. How were they 
made possible? (A) As applied to the great in- 
terests which are dominating business, society, and 
the whole Christian world, by methods which are 
false, and in their application can lead to ruin only. 
(B) In their practice, by every kind of dishonesty, 
injustice and brutality. 

In several instances I have felt and said that it 
was best to carry the point ini question; a little further. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 131 

I find it desirable to do so at the present juncture. 
In taking up and pursuing Applied Biology, I had 
when a mere child toward business and sociology 
the same fundamental impelling force as had Pas- 
teur toward science — namely, the presence of fer- 
mentation. For half a century I have been famil- 
iar with fermentation and distillation, and the dif- 
ferent phases of the trade. I am prepared to take 
the grain, beginning with the kernel, and carry it 
through its biological, hence economical, socio- 
logical and never-ending evolutionary stages ; even, 
to return, with the proper production and matur- 
ing of beverages for use. What is first in impor- 
tance, I am acquainted with the causes of these 
evolutionary stages. Indeed, as did Pasteur here 
find the true bacteriological basis, so here did I 
find the true biological, economical and socio- 
logical basis. Few, if any, have learned to appre- 
ciate or understand their full meaning. Would 
say, however, that I now make this statement solely 
because of its relevancy, thus departing from my 
original intention. 

That real Applied Biology is therefore compe- 
tent to criticize its absence, or opposite forces, 
should never be forgotten. 

Whatever else may be in your mind, pray do not 
let it for a moment dream of my being such a fool 
as to work for man's betterment without the pos- 
session of experience in basal principles, for, in the 
absence of support and influence Heaven knows I 
am big enough fool to do so. 

The first move of the monopolist or centralist 
is to make his position so secure that, be they of 
whatever nature, his things will realize a profit. 



132 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

The second is to make the return of principal and 
payment of interest secure beyond doubt. In my 
second letter an instance in banking is illustrated. 
To accomplish these ends, the monopolists, as far 
as the case needs be, exploit mankind. 

This I should call materialism. The contrast 
between materialism, and proper material sur- 
roundings, in accordance with what I have been 
describing, is as marked as is that between retro- 
gression and advancement, which, in either case, is 
a sequence. 

The efforts of mankind should all be so cen- 
tered as to prevent this exploitation. The efforts of 
mankind should all be so centered as to be able to 
see to it that the price of all things produced should 
stand not below but above their cost, because, as 
a rule, in Christendom, under commercialism, the 
products of land and labor stand at prices below 
their cost of production, thus preventing proper 
material surroundings, and result in retrogression. 

In making up the cost, the maintenance of the 
soil, the maintenance of improvements, and a liv- 
ing wage, of necessity, must be reckoned with. 

In relation to myself, I have barely touched upon 
certain and such of my experiences as have a 
direct bearing upon the betterment of mankind, 
and without which nobody could learn how to 
teach or practically apply the science of biology. 

Without their general application there can be 
no uplifting. The key is to be found in no book 
or books, in no educational institution, in no lab- 
oratory. If my life can be made of any value to 
others whatsoever, these facts cannot be disre- 
garded. In connection with the subject matter, 
the annotations interspersed are relevant. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 133 

The cost of achieving this experience will show 
you at what price I place its value. In a word, be- 
sides occupying my time, it has cost throughout its 
ramifications tens, yes, hundreds of thousands, in 
money actually expended. The fact of being a 
pioneer has cost me the loss of the social pleasures 
that should accompany one's existence, giving in 
return nothing but sorrows. But for the iniquity 
and ignorance it shows, my work might have been 
a greater compensation. Because, in business 
propositions, I could not carry my work to its 
logical conclusion, four or five times I have fore- 
gone a competence which would have enabled me 
to live more in accordance with my tastes. 

In this writing would say that I am not a pessi- 
mist, but by nature the reverse. Nor do I wish to 
appear in the light of a critic or scold; nor have 
I any isms or fads or injuries to avenge; nor do I 
crave ridicule, quite the contrary; nor have I at any 
period of my life given any indication of being bet- 
ter than my fellows, for I have been down among 
and am of the people. But the steadily increasing 
abasement and debasement that I have seen going 
on from the Danube westward since 1872 and the 
destruction of that desirable middle class in 
America which I so much admired, and the inex- 
plainable, have compelled me to denote some of 
my experience and deductions. 

As stated, I have been in four hospitals this year. 
In the first there was a false operation. In the 
fourth my eye was enucleated. So severe are the 
pains running through my head that I can write 
but a few minutes at a time, and should not write 
at all until convalescent. To appreciate all of this, 



134 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

one must have taken some of the same medicine. 
Yet, what I have said and am about to say may 
meet with greater disapproval than did my advo- 
cacy of the new and successful processes and ma- 
chinery with which I was identified. So doubtless 
will my sorrows be augmented. 

I will repeat that, it has seemed impossible for 
me to get away from a chain of experiences which 
led to the practical application of biology, and also 
from examples of the economic and social effects 
of biology where applied. Yet, I have in mind cer- 
tain auxiliaries which I wish had been interlaced. 
Of these, would have been the early evolving on 
paper until they became satisfactory the problems 
as they came to me. Second in importance to bio- 
logical fundamentals, has been the little work I 
have done in this direction these last years — indeed, 
it has formed a part in Applied Biology. Another 
source of benefit to me has been concise oral ex- 
planations. Following biology, which should and 
can be easily taught to everybody, the logical de- 
velopment of problems and certain types of lec- 
tures in certain branches of Applied Biology would 
be the means of diffusing such information as is 
universally needed. For uplifting, these are in- 
dispensable. On the other hand, in my case — do 
you know — I have been compelled to carry in my 
mind the things I have seen since childhood. 
Otherwise, it is more than possible I should not be 
prepared to deal with the questions in point. 

In undertaking to prepare another for truly ap- 
plying biology it would be impossible for me to 
make out as complete and detailed a course as 
have the natural events in my life for so doing 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 135 

followed one after another. I shall, with the op- 
portunity, teach cause and effect of Applied 
Biology, in practice, thus utilizing and giving the 
benefits of these details. In this sense, it is to be 
noted that, it is by no means my ability for which 
I claim so much. It is my experience, and its 
kind. Doubtless others would make better use of 
a similar experience. Yet, while tens of thousands 
have had opportunities for becoming specialists in 
various lines of biology, is there another whose 
realm of practical experience in Applied Biology 
has been so wide, and who has spent so much 
time upon, and who has, in fact, solved the prob- 
lem, without which little value could be attached 
to the whole work? I doubt it. I doubt it, be- 
cause nobody has given any evidence of it. 

Again, it is possible that if I outline more fully 
some of the things through which I was passing 
around the period about which I am now writing 
it might possibly revert to some good to somebody 
somewhere. Up to say fifteen years ago I vainly 
sought in books everywhere for information on 
the subject in which I had had experience. I then 
began to try and logically shape on paper the ex- 
periences of my life, feeling that in them were 
some at least of the fundamentals pertaining to our 
social well-being. This was all so new to me that, 
of course, the results were not satisfactory. 

One of my acquaintances having had some lit- 
erary experience, I told him about the dilemma I 
was in and asked if he would assist me. Receiving 
a reply in the affirmative we tried for some little 
time to see what we could evolve. It would seem 
as if nobody ever produced a more deplorable con- 



136 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

glomeration of matter. I then succeeded in get- 
ting another gentleman to try and assist me on 
the same lines, but after a good deal of hard work 
the results were no better than in the former in- 
stance. 

While realizing that I had no natural literary 
talent, I set out by myself to, if possible, evolve, 
solve and put this problem in a shape whereby it 
might be understood and its merits appreciated. 
All these long years have I not only diligently 
worked, but traveled here and there to get piece- 
meal such information as would be of assistance. 
I confess to not being able to put this matter on 
paper in as ideal a form as I should like to see it, 
but, even so, I have around me sufficient to make 
the matter clear to any intelligent man who would 
devote to it sufficient time. But what I would like 
to emphasize in the strongest possible manner is 
the fact that not until now do I even begin to un- 
derstand and realize the value and importance of 
the incoherent matter which has been gathering in 
my mind during a life of experiences. That is, I 
now only begin to know the value of my experience 
— now it is worked out — and I have also learned 
that without all the hard work and sacrifice which I 
have undergone in shaping it my experience would 
have been little understood by myself and without 
means of avail to others. 

Even at the expense of repetition please note: 
At first I was, among other things, accumulating 
practical experience; next came the absolute ne- 
cessity of doing my own thinking; next came the 
necessity of learning sufficient of science to know 
cause and effect; next to learn why under my sur- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 137 

roundings taxes were not burdensome; next to 
ascertain why our section was uplifting; next to 
learn the conditions of other countries and sec- 
tions and the cause; and finally, the first and to me 
the most laborious work of all by long odds, was 
to put this incoherent mass into concrete form for 
general use. This has cost me well-nigh a quar- 
ter of a century's thought and hard work. Through 
it, I have been convinced that there is no other 
manner of getting sound results. So much would 
I say to young men; and also, there are no men so 
great as to be feared. 

My proposition is for the masses: (1) It would 
afford a unit of income. (2) At the same time, 
without additional cost, afford opportunity for a 
practical biological education. (3) The necessary 
knowledge for fertilizing soil, producing proper 
food, and building up a robust constitution. (4) 
It would enormously increase the purchasing 
power. (5) It would settle the question of taxa- 
tion and through simplicity make ideal govern- 
ment possible. (6) All resulting in self-uplifting. 
(7) All this would everywhere cause imitators who 
would be endorsers, and also command the support 
of every living intelligent physician and scientist, 
and intelligent man. (8) The few fitted for 
philosophy and science could easily be provided 
with opportunities. 

It matters not by whom the initiative is taken, 
there is no other system in God's world whereby 
retrogression can be stayed and men can become 
self-uplifting. 

So thoroughly do I believe in the evolutionary 
stages through which I have passed, and so impor- 



138 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

tant do I deem them, that, for the masses, I would 
establish an educational system based upon just 
the kind of experiences I have undergone, giving 
others the opportunity of learning through exam- 
ple and precept what has taken me through fate 
so long to learn. While I regard the system I 
have in mind as being based on the only true fun- 
damentals, pray do not understand me as claiming 
for it more than the beginning, for advancement 
would continue day by day. 

This is why I say that this plain statement might 
possibly revert to some good to somebody some- 
where. 

It is to be hoped you will not regard me as being 
quite such an idiot as to proclaim or even im- 
agine that I am the equal of Herbert Spencer. 
But, with the purpose in view, I feel it imperative, 
before concluding, to call your attention to a single 
comparison of our respective labors. 

As, naturally, it would be impossible for me to 
do, in "Education," Herbert Spencer illuminated 
Applied Biology. In the first 148 pages of "Edu- 
cation," with few exceptions, is said almost exactly 
what I would be glad to say to you. If you wish 
to understand me and my purpose and desire to 
better the condition of mankind, permit me to sug- 
gest that you read, even though you have done so, 
these 148 pages. 

In this little book is the ideal that I have almost 
since my infancy prayed that I might be able to 
initiate. Strange as it may seem, I never saw this 
bo«k until after the death of Herbert Spencer, 
when my attention was called to it by a friend. 

Now, let me repeat, I can neither write nor 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 139 

theorize, as did Herbert Spencer. Nor at all, un- 
less somewhat acquainted with the practical side 
of the subject. On the other hand, for mainte- 
nance of soil, for more properly starting and rear- 
ing children, for more properly feeding and envi- 
roning mankind, each being a single link in the 
chain, Spencer could not or doubtless he would 
have, being in a position to do so, inaugurated an 
example in Applied Biology, for it would have been 
not only generally imitated, but approved by every 
intelligent man in Oriental and Occidental civili- 
zation. But this I claim I can do. Withhold for 
a moment your ridicule, because, in the matter with 
which I am surrounded, I have sufficient evidence 
to prove that my statement has for its basis facts. 
Of the two, which represents man's everlasting 
need, theories which are over the heads of the peo- 
ple, and can momentarily entertain the few only, or 
an example which could be universally imitated to 
advantage? Indeed, in this problem, Spencer could 
not have directed the first step. In this relation, 
he was not, and if living would not now be alone. 
For the problem 'has been neither initiated nor 
even presented. For instance, in this direction, 
the thousands of scientists, including those con- 
nected with the 400 Agricultural Experiment Sta- 
tions, whose expenditure, literally speaking, al- 
ready run up into hundreds of millions, have made 
no headway; nor did the pioneer in agricultural 
experiments, Sir John B. Lawes, who personally 
expended about £400,000, and was assisted by Sir 
James Gilbert. 

In relation to Lawes' large expenditures on ag- 
ricultural experiments, it is noteworthy that, Sir 



140 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

John was a manufacturer of fertilizers, and that, in 
no other manner could he have gained so wide and 
high a standing in the business, social and scien- 
tific world. In so far as I can learn, all of the 
others engaged in scientific and biological investi- 
gations have been and are doing so under the re- 
cipiency of a steady income, be its source States, 
societies, or individuals. 

For all my expenditures and work in this direc- 
tion, not one penny have I received in return from 
State, society, individual, or any source whatso- 
ever. Now that the time is ripe. Now that my 
efforts have crystallized, I distribute these letters 
among a few, hoping that through them I may find 
the desired patrons, in order to be able to put my 
methods and system in force. 

While I have not written as plainly as I might 
have, and would like to, things have been said 
which might lead those so inclined to look upon 
me as an egotist and a visionary, and also sufficient 
possibly to force me outside the pale of so-called 
respectability. In all its phases, the criticism occa- 
sioned by the utterance of vital truths not com- 
monly accepted (more especially when opposed to 
imperialism and commercialism) is so repugnant 
to all of my instincts that heretofore I have 
never issued any matter of this sort over 
my own name, and would not do so now 
but for the vital importance of the occasion. 
Still I cannot close this letter without condensing 
some things already stated or intimated which 
will not tend toward mitigation. 

While, of course, I have met men who were fa- 
miliar with certain of the problems in question, I 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 141 

■have yet to find one fitted to analyze all of them 
when taken as a whole, therefore, who could take 
my place. I do not believe there is a man living 
who can do so; nor one who can develop Applied 
Biology on as complete and far-reaching lines as 
those I have in mind. Now mark, this is not only 
the obstacle which confronts me, but it is also the 
one that confronts universal advancement. 

Never before was the world in so vital need of 
its application. Never before was there so wide a 
field for humanitarianism offered. The problem is 
not Utopian. Properly handled it is not so over- 
whelming as a stranger to it might imagine. Is 
there to be found the material for the effort? 



IX. 



IN Guildhall, London, not long since, Mr. An- 
drew Carnegie made the following statement: 
"It is the swimming tenth not the submerged tenth 
which we can greatly benefit, and this often by in- 
direct rather than by direct means." This was ap- 
plauded by the ruling class of England. If a nine- 
story brick structure is on a disintegrating founda- 
tion, can the middle story be put in sound condi- 
tion? Rather, must not the foundation be dealt 
with? Does not the same hold good with peoples? 

Free distribution of libraries in cities seems to 
be Mr. Carnegie's specialty. His great wealth 
would not purchase for all men a single volume 
each. He locates libraries in large towns and 
cities. The books are accessible to a fraction of 
one per cent, of mankind only. To a class. If it 
be true that there have been and are but few sound 
writers, is it not true that few men, who, on com- 
ing upon them, are able to detect misstatements? 
Indeed nowhere has Applied Biology been in full, 
practice. Therefore, in no way has it been truly 
depicted. Then where are to be found sound and 
safe sociologists? If 'there be few, then there be 
few books sufficiently sound and instructive to be 
sown broadcast. 

Having put before him nothing but false matter, 
in the absence of experience and scientific training, 
in the very nature of things there is nobody so un- 
sound throughout as the interminable reader; 

142 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 143 

nobody so dangerous and hurtful to society as the 
same book-worm endowed with audacity and a 
nimble tongue — the absence of genuineness, of 
course, intensifies the same. 

But, after you establish great, or, for that mat- 
ter, small libraries, what are you going to do for 
librarians? In my researches at the British Mu- 
seum the kind and gentlemanly librarian could do 
nothing for me. He was not at all familiar with 
nor could he find anything instructive on these 
matters. At a library second to none in America 
I called upon the librarian for assistance. He said 
to me: "I am not familiar with the subject mat- 
ter, but if your statements are based on fact, they 
are axiomatic." I smiled, he colored, and I offered 
to satisfy him. He said: "I will go over to the 
(great) university and ascertain." Naturally, I 
again smiled, and he foolishly became furious at his 
own plight. Now, in the literary and social world 
this man — and his family — ranks high. Yet, of the 
very things he should know, he is as ignorant as 
a new-born babe. This being true, how in this po- 
sition can this man better the world? So, on the 
whole, I regard Mr. Carnegie's distribution of 
libraries as harmful, to the extent of being revo- 
lutionary. 

I now see why, as far back as my memory runs, 
my grandmother, a clever old Scotch lady, warned 
me against over and promiscuous reading and con- 
stantly talked to me about the importance of 
thinking and reasoning. 

Dunfermline, Scotland, is Andrew Carnegie's 
native town. To make it a "City Beautiful," he 
has given to it about $3,000,000. This work, ac- 



144 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

cording to the press, is to be carried out by The 
American Institute of Social Service. The Ameri- 
can Institute of Social Service is an auxiliary of 
the Community of Interest. Its offices are in a 
building presented by one of the captains of indus- 
try. I never heard such revolutionary doctrines 
(innocently put forth I hope) as I have heard put 
forth by these people in this building. This so- 
ciety is -the personification of centralism. It 
creates, rather than prevents, pauperism. In mak- 
ing cities approach Elysium, the rural classes are 
drawn to them, and finally universal poverty and 
degradation, such, for instance, as is to be found 
in High Street, Edinburgh, under the shadows of 
Carnegie's library, and in India and Russia, result. 
In China, four centuries ago, the ruinous effects of 
abnormally centering people were discovered and 
immediately stopped. If Carnegie's work is any- 
thing at all, from beginning to end, it is an alarm- 
ing centralizing scheme. 

I am averse to paternalism, public charity and 
so-called reforms. They are upon a false basis. 
Therefore they are hurtful. I contend that, unac- 
quainted with Applied Biology, one's labor in this 
direction, naturally, is false and makes for harm; 
consequently, one whose energies have been de- 
voted to money-getting is naturally incapable of 
putting in force Applied Biology or social 
philosophy. 

Had not Carnegie found a Rockefeller-Morgan 
crowd to contract to take his iron plants at six to 
eight times their value, and to obtain the money 
with which to pay for them from washerwomen, 
servants, artisans, doctors, lawyers, merchants, 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 145 

etc., the world would not have been so greatly 
hurt. And, moreover, his example is illustrative 
of all public so-called humanitarian demonstra- 
tions. Upon the receipt of the steel bonds, had 
they been thrown into a furnace, it would have been 
incomparably better for mankind. Better still, 
had there never been a United States Steel Trust. 
Why our government does not take from it the 
prop of protection passes my understanding. 

Without possessing biological knowledge, now 
more essential than at any period up to this time, 
no one is properly fitted for leading men or direct- 
ing governmental affairs ; no one is fitted for acting 
as publicist; no one is fitted for writing true his- 
tory; no one is fitted for properly teaching men; 
no one is fitted for properly rearing a family or bet- 
tering social conditions ; no one is fitted for 
suffrage. 

In comparison with the wealth of Mr. Carnegie, 
had I a trifling sum, I would inaugurate an ex- 
ample of true sociology; where, at one and the 
same time, men would labor under fair incomes; 
where environment would afford ethical uplifting; 
where proper animal food would be multiplied sev- 
eral fold; where proper food for making robust 
men would be to hand; where Applied Biology 
would be an inevitable constituent; this should be 
the first lesson taught everlastingly, to everybody; 
where matter for legislative enactment, some at 
least, essential for turning toward betterment, would 
be unfolded; where habitation would be fixed — an 
indispensable feature in upbuilding. The sequence 
would be, a following of imitators. For example, 
Hungarians, Austrians, Germans, Danes, English- 



146 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

men, have said to me : when you are ready to initiate 
us, advise and we will visit you. 

On the other hand, try and imagine a settlement 
living under biological fundamentals which make 
for true social conditions, and compare it with one 
void of these elements — like unto those, for in- 
stance, by which we are all surrounded; try and 
imagine in force a self-supporting, self-uplifting 
system, which will everywhere bring forth imita- 
tors and compare it with one which exists on char- 
ity, void of the stimulus and possibility of general 
imitation; try, in a word, to imagine progress and 
compare it with disintegration and retrogression. 
This done, you will get an idea of some of the 
things I have in mind and some of my reasons for 
writing these letters. 

When, and not until, such methods as I have in 
mind will have become in force, will men be more 
highly developed physically; will education begin 
fundamentally; will economics, government, so- 
ciology and religion have fair play. It is note- 
worthy that all movements, whether retroactive or 
progressive, are, in. each instance, intermingled, it 
being impossible to single out any of 'them. The 
entire movement of necessity must be in one direc- 
tion or the other. This sort of talk may be un- 
popular and misconstrued, it is, I believe, all true 
nevertheless. 

During the Presidential campaign in 1896, Mr. 
Carnegie said, according to the press, that farmers 
never would need and should not be as prosperous 
as they had been. This is sufficient to show that 
the falling of fabulous sums of money into the 
hands of one who has not had a life-long economic 



Letters Touching Unrest Cause and Remedy. 147 

training is hurtful. Were it not that supremacy 
of the few, relating to which Mr. Carnegie is so 
dogmatic, is a part of this whole, the agricultural 
proposition would cause even the appalling wick- 
edness of the latter to sink into insignificance. 



X. 

I HAVE just read an address in which England's 
protection of life and property and prosperity 
were the chief features. When, according to the 
American Standard, fewer than 25 per cent, of her 
40,000,000 Britons are sufficiently fed and properly 
housed and clothed in one instance, and 1 per cent, 
of her 300,000,000 Indians in another, and mortal- 
ity due to starvation is unprecedented, is England 
justified in claiming that she protects life? When 
her daily bread is obtained through the exploitation 
of 90 per cent, of mankind is England justified in 
claiming that she protects property? Moreover, do 
these conditions justify the claim of a sound, fiscal 
system and lasting prosperity? Again, what are 
we to think when the Police Departments of great 
cities warn us of localities where life is not worth 
half a crown. 

In all that is claimed for England's fiscal system, 
prosperity and mental superiority, what would have 
happened, if, during the recent decades, the United 
States had not made it possible for England to 
purchase her daily bread and raw material at say 
half the cost of its production? Would not her 
industries have fallen into a condition correspond- 
ing with that of her agriculture; and, provided 
methods remained unchanged, would not have 
Britons retrogressed more even than they have and 
quite as much as have in the meantime Russians? 

While I am writing these words, the British tex- 

148 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 149 

tile industry, which, according to some writers, 
furnishes a livelihood for ten million Britons, serves 
as a point in question. It is to-day in a chaotic 
state. Why ? Chiefly because of the present high 
price of cotton. What caused the high prices? 
The former ruinously low prices. On the other 
hand, it is not so long ago that, as applied to grain 
and meat, like conditions obtained. And in my 
judgment, it will not be very long before they 
obtain again. As nearly all virgin soil has been 
exploited, and competition is widening and becom- 
ing more intense, is not the situation alarming? 
Rotten, rotten to the core, are fiscal systems which 
anywhere engender starvation, feebleness and mor- 
tality. 

Renowned men now come here to tell us that, 
"The only proper method of studying governments 
is to take actual illustrations from the governments 
where the people rule. Here you should study 
politics as a science" ; and that, "Biological theories 
are being stretched and racked to death to make 
them fit classes of facts to which they have no 
proper application." 

Let us look into these questions. For years, 
farming land was under my observation which 
annually netted $90 per acre. The annual taxes 
were under $2 per acre — therefore, not felt. 

I hold a tax receipt which shows that $3 covered 
the taxes on a house and lot that cost $7,000 and 
rented for $400 per annum — a sum so small, rela- 
tively, as not to be given a second thought. 

I have been surrounded by 25,000 people where 
the unit of income and the environment were so 
nearly ideal that in the ten townships there was not 



150 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

a single paid official, or a poor person enrolled. 

Here in remunerative agriculture are illustrations 
of applied fundamentals which furnish a basis for 
everything in human affairs which make for bet- 
terment. The cause of these desirable results is 
embryotic, Applied Biology. Therefore, it con- 
troverts what is said regarding biological theories, 
and shows that applied science so simplifies govern- 
mental affairs as to make "the study of politics as 
a science/' irrational. 

Certain vital questions to which I have always 
given thought have naturally been frequently 
raised by me, only to have them received with an 
overwhelming benumbing blankness. Now, I really 
beg you to note that the type of man abiding in 
the environment just referred to is the antithesis 
of the types found in the brutism of the soddened 
ryot or peasant, and on the other hand of that 
found among the urban classes, which, from the 
soddened animal to the destructive millionaire, is 
indexed by the unit of income. In truth, he is the 
antithesis of the average man. 

During, say, the last five decades, Christendom 
has fallen under plutocratic rule, therefore has 
retrogressed. What it behooves the world to know, 
is the cause and the remedy. This cannot be 
learned by studying governments, or through the 
science of politics, because no politician is acquaint- 
ed with the things in question and no government 
is practicing them. These are the reasons why, in 
as far as possible, Bismarck endeavored to learn the 
conditions throughout the world locally. 

To my mind, and if I am familiar with any of 
these things, I am with the point in question, the 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 151 

lectures delivered at our universities by a French- 
man with a view of controverting fundamental 
business theories of Napoleon are about as hurtful 
propaganda as it would be possible to put forth. 
But otherwise, it would not be in keeping with the 
times, brutism and bad manners seeming to the the 
goal. 

In addressing his constituents, January 17, 1899, 
the Right Hon. John Morley frankly admitted that 
he took a pessimistic view of the difficulties threat- 
ening throughout the world. 

"I think," he exclaimed, "we are nearer the be- 
ginning of them than the end." It was his "firm 
conviction that the prevailing spirit of imperialism 
must inevitably bring militarism, a gigantic daily 
growing expenditure, increased power to aristo- 
crats and privileged classes, and war." 

For the whole world, the past five years have 
been blackest of all. The falseness of acting on 
a so-called economic system which has for its basis 
general centralization has been clearly shown. This 
is the very thing upon which Mr. Morley had to 
base his calamitous prognostications in 1899. So, 
for the life of me, I cannot understand what has 
happened to have transformed Mr. Morley into the 
optimist his recent speeches would indicate. Truly, 
this is confusing. 

Why, the costly maintenance of governments ; 
the overwhelming state and municipal indebted- 
nesses, and the sapping of the fundamentals of up- 
building, which become indispensable in raising the 
sums expended by and for the few, should of them- 
selves deter the advocacy of the world's present 
regime. 



152 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

So long as the social conditions of the United 
States were nearer the ideal than were those of any 
corresponding numbers on earth, it was the ex- 
ception among Britons, and, indeed, among the 
peoples on the continent of Europe, when we were 
not referred to as "those tricky" or "damned 
Yankees," and it is not too much to say that every- 
where one traveled the trading people chuckled 
over doing us up. But now that we are practicing 
on the largest scale the very methods which Na- 
poleon said would ruin the world, the most con- 
spicuous Europeans are flocking here to praise and 
help us on to that ruin. 

Finally, before closing, for the purpose of 
making a larger target for you to fire at, I will 
interject the following still more pronounced lines 
— little short of a challenge. 

You are invited to come to my rooms and enter 
upon the first moves in the realm of things which 
make for the highest ideal civilization attainable, 
and follow these by stating and explaining in their 
proper rotation, cause and effect in each of the 
evolutionary stages which make for this idealism. 
That is, in a word, I invite you to come here and 
show me, if you can, what will make for ideal men, 
homes and governments. Until this problem is 
generally understood and in practice progress is im- 
possible. 

Regardless of race, color, or location, the brut- 
ism, which is now the dominant factor of Christian 
rule, must give way to science. 

A word about the mistakes resulting from not 
listening to new propositions, or in not gaining 
experience before entering upon something new. 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 153 

Some years ago an acquaintance of mine was taken 
into his father's business. They had a capital 
largely exceeding a million dollars. The young 
man entered into an outside undertaking with which 
he was unacquainted. An opportunity of purchas- 
ing the necessary experience for a small sum was 
presented. Rather than accepting it, he, being 
something of an egotist, undertook the thing alone. 
The result was the absorption of the capital of the 
concern and the father's suicide. About the same 
time there was close by another similar instance 
which cost $3,000,000. One of the world's great 
rulers was offered invaluable information. He 
ignored it. But a few months later he put thirty 
men into the same field of investigation. All 
naturally without avail. 

Thirty years or so ago, few Americans studied 
European methods. Those who did and made use 
of them were generally benefited. I was, anyway. 
At that time Englishmen would hardly look at an 
American invention, or treat an agent civilly; while 
the Germans then began to look into and take up 
outside things, and their rapid strides are familiar 
to us all. But, in the meantime, for unison of 
action, downright horse-sense, and good results, 
the Japanese have not only surpassed all with 
whom I am acquainted, but they are the only people 
who have gone at things in an intelligent and 
straightforward manner. This makes apparent to 
me the normality and soundness of the Japanese. 
In giving my full views of them and the Chinese 
occasionally, I find my friends are not in accord 
with them at all. Strange as it all seems, the Anglo- 
Saxon does not like to hear the truth, when it is 
about himself. 



XL 

THE grand test of any government is contained 
in the question, What did it do for the people ? 
Did it feed, cloth and house them, or did it not? 

This was the proposition laid down at the very 
outset; and the end in view was to show whether 
Christendom has or has not complied with these 
conditions, and, in the meantime, to show whether 
I am fitted to deal with these problems. 

While with nitrogen and oxygen the ideal man 
can be developed, it should in this relation be es- 
pecially noted that nitrogen is the world's motive 
power, and that I am not unmindful of the one 
economic and practical means of its obtainment and 
maintenance of supply. Were it not for this fact 
and the belief in my ability to enter upon the in- 
itiative I should not now be writing these letters. 

It has been made clear that, excepting in certain 
instances, as, for example, in America, the 1,000,-- 
000,000 people under Christian rule have been in- 
sufficiently and improperly fed, consequently, badly 
housed and scantily clothed. 

It has been made clear that, for, say five decades, 
there has been throughout the world a steady de- 
crease in the production of nutritious food ; and also 
that for three decades the ability to produce nitrog- 
enous or strength-giving food has been steadily 
and deliberately undermined. The soil has been 
robbed of its fertility and farm values have been 
destroyed. 

154 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 155 

It has been made clear that, due to the absence 
of food, mortality has been unprecedented; while 
vital statistics do not extend in this direction, a lit- 
tle hard work will show that localities of large 
mortality of the young and consequently the num- 
bers whose deaths were due to improper food have 
increased alarmingly, add to this, deaths resulting 
from wars, and the mortality of acres due to the 
starvation of land, and you have cannibalism which 
would shock a savage. 

By whom were all these incredible things brought 
about? (1) By imperialists, commercialists, cen- 
tralists, monopolists and their touts — by the so- 
called Bankers and Brokers. (2) By, as a whole, 
the urban population, including, of course, artisans. 
(3) By the educational system at the urban centers 
and great universities. (4) By the extolling by 
clergymen of modern commercial methods and the 
monopolistic idea of the supremacy of one man 
over others or one country over others. 

These are dreadful and, if not true, wicked things 
you keep on saying ! How were they made pos- 
sible? (A) As applied to the great interests which 
are dominating business, society, and the whole 
Christian world, by methods which are false, and 
in their application can lead to ruin only. (B) In 
their practice, by every kind of dishonesty, injustice 
and brutality. 

Of myself, moreover, it has, I believe, been made 
clear that I am prepared with the proper initiative 
for dealing with these problems. 

In any way whatsoever, statesmen or countries 
instrumental in the transportation and disposition 
of the earth's products at a price below the cost of 



156 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

their replacement, are enemies of mankind. Ar- 
tisans, who help to depress prices of the food they 
consume, destroy the income and purchasing power 
of the great horde of producers and consumers, 
are enemies of mankind also. Back of this, in either 
instance, is ignorance, or greed, or both combined. 

Under civilization, is it not anomalous that, in 
place of the Applied Biologist who feeds, clothes 
and houses us, of first importance is he who, 
through false and ruinous methods, profitably 
vends the largest amount of commodities or secur- 
ities? Is it not anomalous that, a Morgan, a 
Rockefeller, or even a Community of Interest, can 
make inoperative natural laws, and create disaster? 
Is it not still more anomalous, that, under Chris- 
tianity the Almighty dollar has become the idol and 
ruler of everybody? 

While petroleum represents a small industry 
relatively, its annual value having been in some 
of the years of its fable like transposition, under 
$25,000,000, the Standard Oil Trust is an illus- 
trative instance of the falseness in question. After 
John D. Rockefeller became interested in petroleum 
he put in practice such of the false methods as were 
and are applied to the world's greatest industries and 
which have been steadily destroying and will destroy 
all the good claimed for Western civilization. By so 
doing, in the following order, Rockefeller ruined 
every refiner, every producer, and every gambler 
in oil. So has he and his creature, the Standard 
Oil Trust, become a menace to the whole world; 
so will the general application of the same methods 
ruin it. 

A friend assures me that he can trace to the ex- 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 157 

tent of two billions a single interest of the Standard 
Oil Trust. The property owned and dominated by 
Standard Oil and its nine trustees runs into the 
billions of dollars. The annual net profits repre- 
sent in hard money received day by day no mean 
proportion of the direct and paper profits of 
America. There was never a potentate, or con- 
cern, who wielded the power throughout the entire 
world that the Standard Oil and its trustees now 
wield. 

Should a Rockefeller enter upon and apply to 
produce gambling the same energy and the same 
nefarious methods that were applied to oil gambling, 
there is no year in which it would not be possible 
for him, through the cutting off of a large per- 
centage of her supply of food and raw material, to 
destroy Great Britain, and disturb the peace of the 
world. Such an act would not be deterred by any 
personal compunctions of conscience. 

While outside of the fundamentals contained in 
the groundwork of advancement and uplifting, and, 
by themselves, outside of legislative control, the 
chief things practiced in the creation of the wealth 
and power of Rockefeller and the Standard Oil 
must of necessity be abandoned. In this as in all 
kinds of monopoly the property and business of 
opponents are insecure, and men are deprived of 
opportunity. 

Indeed, with possibly a single exception, the 
Standard Oil Trust has its dominating hand in 
each and every interest which dominates the 
United States — whose influence in the world is 
now generally recognized. This is not only what 
everybody should know, but its overwhelmingness 



158 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

should stir everybody to take a hand in an effort to 
destroy the methods by which this power was 
usurped. 

The ground I would like completely to cover 
is about as follows : As applied to the great inter- 
ests which are now made to dominate everything 
under Christian rule, the methods are false, unjust, 
brutal, destructive, and such as lead to exhaustion 
of the soil, diminished productivity, the enrichment 
and supremacy of the few, at the expense of the 
remainder of mankind, through their impoverish- 
ment, or extinction, due to the absence of food, or 
the purveying of improper food. These things are 
the result of dishonesty and fiendishness, being 
simply devilish, hellish. Worse they cannot be 
made. 

At nightfall were men deprived of reason for 
the purpose of, upon its restoration at dawn, be- 
ginning anew, it would require ages to develop a 
social scheme so ruinous as that now practiced by 
Christendom. 

Indeed, there are no methods that can lead to 
complete and universal ruin other than those now 
in practice in Christian countries, namely, the cen- 
tering of husbandry, industries, people and money. 
In other words, the destruction of opportunities, 
the result of which means decay. 

While all the world gives this centralization 
credence of being a living thing, and fertilizes and 
cultivates it, it is on the contrary an abnormality, 
being a hybrid of greed, brutality, pride, ignorance 
and bigotry. Without a complete and peaceful 
transposition, curative efforts through referendum, 
cooperation, single tax, governmental ownership, 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 159 

or any other socialistic or fiscal scheme, merely 
evidence littleness, or dishonesty of purpose. The 
remedy can be found only, first, in science on the 
one side, and second, in philosophical govern- 
mental enactments on the other. 

In face of this centralization, I would like to be 
able to say to everybody that, in undertaking to 
uplift man, we are just as irrational, just as insane, 
as though we were undertaking to create new life 
for a new world. 

"What knowledge is of most worth?" In his 
essay on education, Spencer's answer is, "As vigor- 
ous health and its accompanying high spirits are 
larger elements of happiness than any other things 
whatsoever, the teaching how to maintain them is a 
teaching that should yield in moment to no other 
whatever." 

While this is what should be aimed at, it is ex- 
actly the opposite of what Christendom has been and 
is doing. However, should not Spencer have added 
the word, "develop" — "how to develop and main- 
tain them" ? 

Since the application of steam and electricity has 
brought all peoples into intimate relations, modern 
methods have illuminated to an extent exceeding 
human conception, the world's brutality in one in- 
stance, and impotency in the other. 

The result of all this shows that the present social 
structure of civilization is on a superficial and ab- 
normal basis. Therefore, so is each and every part 
of it. 

"Nay, take my life and all ; pardon not tfiat'; 
You take my house when you do take the prop 



160 Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 

That cloth sustain my house ; you take my life 
When you take the means whereby I live." 

Christendom has been and is taking "the prop 
that doth sustain," what is known as civilization. 

Christendom has offended against natural laws. 
Christendom has left undone those things which it 
ought to have done, and it has done those things 
which it ought not to have done ; and there is no 
health in it. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon 
us, miserable offenders. Spare thou those, O God, 
who confess their faults. 

There is but one way to stay retrogression and 
chaos. There is but one way that leads to advance- 
ment and uplifting. 

For weal or woe, the world must depend upon 
Methods. The basis for advancement and uplifting 
can in no wise be laid other than by the formulation, 
the initiation, and the maintenance of proper 
Methods. Their accomplishment depends upon the 
few, absolutely. By the few, I mean no greater 
number than can be counted on one's fingers, yea, 
even of those on one hand. 

Man never before was in such vital need of 
assistance. Never before was the opportunity pre- 
sented for man to demonstrate himself by his works 
to be almost superhuman. 

In face of the facts presented and others still 
more overwhelming, I would like to ask those who 
will instinctively declare my statements extravagant 
whether language has the power of more than 
shadowing the blackness of things? And also 
whether they have given these things a modicum 
of the attention I have and whether they are as 



Letters Touching Unrest, Cause and Remedy. 161 

scientifically backed ? Though all men now seem to 
be possessed of that inexplainable something recog- 
nized as the tremor of dread, should I treat fully on 
the little known even to myself relating to modern 
affairs I would naturally expect the inexperienced 
and unthinking to discredit the greater part of what 
I might say, for everything points to a ruin which 
the people are not yet ready to admit is inevitable. 

Unrest, for a remedy, the world has been and is 
crying. Opportunity, there is for its initiative. Of 
it, will you or will you not avail yourselves? 

And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his 
brethren; and they hated him yet the more. 
Genesis, xxxvii, 5. , 

William M. Babbott, 



Post-Office Box 499, 
New York, U. S. A. 



